Wheel With a Single Spoke by Nichita Stanescu

stomach of the guide
    like through the sack of great divide.
    But the Å pilberk dead are not our twins,
    they are too old for our cognition.
    The newly dead, the newly dead
    run over us like sweat,
    the guide perceives my sweat-soaked
    meninges and licks them.
    I leave white. What’s dry inside me growls.
    A stone jester at the gate of the prison.
    I lean against it. It is and isn’t.
    I kiss its cheek. I drink water from its mouth.

Contemplation
    Sickly spheres appear, bubbly, livid,
    pushing against the night, shoving it aside.
    Spools of trees turn wet, turn to liquid
    and flow, so bitter, to the other side.
    Let’s sit on benches in the damp
    and watch the Prodigal Son return,
    I know him by his sound and shape
    and the way the nocturnal birds
    fall dead above him
    and by the cold of amphibians
    that snake around my heels,
    my ankles, my tibias . . .

Pulse
    Everything you saw froze so quickly
    the lake and all that leapt
    from its banks, and the comet
    froze like a skier mid-jump.
    Then it melted so quickly,
    it would have been natural
    for you to drown in the depths
    like fish on gravel.
    You just had to know to swim
    and then to skate on the ice,
    then swim, then skate,
    for a moment – a day, a month – a life.

Law
    Because I imagine it
    he told me:
    law means having two hands
    two hands with five fingers
    each,
    law means having two
    feet
    with five toes each
    I sit among green branches
    and imagine this
    law, law means having
    two hands
    with five fingers each
    law means having two
    feet
    with five toes each
    Law means having a skull
    with two eyes, two ears
    two nostrils
    two eyebrows, two
    pairs of separations
    He told me, because
    I imagine
    you have a head, two hands, two feet
    Night falls and shadow falls
    You lie down, but you won’t for long
    you have to be because you were
    He told me: get up
    walk around.

Ode to Joy
    Come you, soul’s grandeur
    released from memory and the flight of guardian angels
    always whooshing over you with wings
    of calm, as though the world
    were made of stained silk, and maternal hands
    ripped it, slowly, out of spite.
    Come grandeur and say:
    I was just like him,
    my nerves experienced the same vernal green,
    I wrapped myself in the same horizon;
    the plain of aloneness.
    Everyone thought I was him, even me,
    because of the sole sky
    where the sun and moon beat
    over us.
    I went ahead of him, I went
    behind,
    I floated over him, or I was the road
    and let his footsteps kiss me, over and over,
    until everyone thought I was him,
    even I thought I was him
    because of the gift of death, something that
    endowed us both.
    When they stuck their split tongues out to whistle
    words with seven heads,
    biting and poisoning us, and we
    had the same torn ear and the same bloodstains,
    we colored diabolic syllables, –
    I thought I was him, and everyone
    thought I was him,
    and only he knew
    which body exactly he was in.
    But only he really died,
    only he knew that it was he,
    but I did nothing but turn
    my wrath a moment toward myself,
    so law could pass in peace
    and mystery could pass unmolested.
    No earlier, no later.

Undeciphered Inscription
    The river flowed by quickly, even though
    it was there alone, all the time.
    Being there, it flowed
    and carried being and everything, thus
    we kissed with our throats cut.
    My words and yours
    stuck together, because
    the place where they were born
    was one and the same for both of us.
    Like a god with two bodies and no head,
    we trotted along
    on four feet,
    with four hands patting the walls.
    The river flowed by quickly, even though
    it existed alone.
    Existing, it carried existence and all else.
    Thus frozen and alone, we persisted
    sleeping in the same knee joint,
    in the center without color,
    at the edge without noise.

Where They Go
    Feelings go, oh,
    in the ear
    Feelings go, oh,
    in the eye,
    nostril, tongue.
    Oh my, feelings go
    in the ear.
    They sleep like
    an earring hangs,
    they trip along the thin