Wheel With a Single Spoke by Nichita Stanescu Page A

cartilage,
    they bed on the drum of the tympanum . . .
    . . . feelings go, oh,
    in the ear.
    Only the soul goes
    nowhere.
    The soul has nowhere to go.
    The soul goes nowhere.
    Its ear is
    no one’s ear.

Scent on a High Hill
    As though it rained, long ago, the black earth,
    slippery, bugs
    with wet legs press their bodies
    against black branches
    or windows, or door frames, Lord,
    oh,
    and musty air on boxes
    flecked with green.
    God has left then, ah, he’s left,
    and there’s no reason I can smell, no reason.
    High hill, valley, high hill,
    loam, black grass . . .

The Sacrifice and Burning of Everything
    I break a lamb along its spine,
    my thumb pops out its eye,
    I snap a hoof off, then the nostrils,
    the liver, the unguent kidney,
    I hold the brain jelly in my palm
    careful to not let it drip
    its lamby vision, much too calm,
    and stain my demiurgic tunic.
    Lord, I burn them that the smell be sweet,
    I will burn everything, for the sake of sin,
    I will smite a bull between its horns
    and cut the goat’s jugular, to be forgiven,
    I will tear apart any animal I meet.
    To please you will I scorch
    their pieces, and all of this to signify
    that you and I resemble them. The torch
    will burn whatever you want, the thigh
    on the bone, the lung I pull into the light.
    For you, O Lord, are the greatest sense of smell,
    the nostril of time, the epochal nostril.
    But I will never pluck a flower,
    never crush a splendorous carnation,
    nor will I ever have to pull the sex
    from a sublime body of verdation.
    We who have animal bodies
    lacking roots, we move.
    We, beside the flower’s soft splendor,
    sit eating one another.
    So we may be a tasty feed
    for worlds stuck in the earth,
    the taxes trees and grass
    will pay, simply to be.
    We have only soles, but they
    have roots in myth. Our sky
    has stars alone, just stars,
    while they are deep with halted time.

What Is Life? When Does It Start, and Where Is It Going?
    Toward all parts at once, said
    the one without parts.
    Toward one part alone, said
    The Part.
    What is it?
    What what is it?
    It is, pure and simple.
    I mean I, I mean T, I mean I, I mean S.
    The first I is older than the second I.
    That’s all.

Noose
    Along the stone’s grey-white edge
    young people file by,
    thin, like an evil chalk mark
    on the idolatrous slate of the night.
    O equations, to the power of two,
    gentle trigonometry
    of the only one who exists
    in us, the divine “to be.”
    They pass and bells ring,
    they pass and cannons ring,
    they pass and clocks ring,
    ever faster, ever more disturbing.
    Long and holy line, I would hang myself
    from you alone, as if from a tree,
    and let myself be rocked and rung
    by a secular, cold breeze.

What Is the Supreme Power That Drives the Universe and Creates Life?
    The power to be, but especially the power
    to have been – being.
    The power to not be
    but especially the power
    to have not been – being.
    The power, ah, the power
    to have not had power,
    a-e-i-o-u, e-i-a-u-o,
    u-a-i-e-o.
    Sound with smell,
    continuity without time,
    migratory heart
    exchanging bodies.
    If you are no more, it is like
    you have not been.
    To be is like
    you have not been,
    a-e-i-o-u, u-o-i-e-a,
    A and E
    and I and O
    and U . . .

What Is a Human? What Are His Origins? What Fate Awaits Him?
    A human is a leaf a human sees.
    A human is a flower a human smells.
    A human is a horse a human rides.
    A human is a peach a human tastes.
    A human is a sea a human touches.
    A human is a wheel.
    A human is milk a human drinks.
    A human is the dawn over a human.
    A human is a dream at night.
    A human is the pleasure of a blue sky a human sees.
    A human is a bird’s flight a human flies.
    A human is a word a human speaks.
    A human is a word understood.
    A human is a word a human reads.
    A human is a word un-understood.
    Human is a word asleep in human stone.
    Human is a word at rest in stars
    above the human.
    Human is the unword of human.
    Human is a dying