Michael Palmer

Those who have lived here since before time are gone while the ones who must replace them have not yet arrived. The streets are wet with a recent rain yet you continue to count first minutes and hours then trees rocks, windows, mailboxes, streetlights and pictographs refusing to rest even for the brief span it would take to dry off, change clothes and reemerge grotesque yet oddly attractive like Paganini whose mother was visited by a seraph in Genoa not long before his birth and who is thought now to have acquired much of his technical wizardry as a result of Marfan’s syndrome a quite common anomaly of the connective tissues which may well account for the tall and angular body, muscular underdevelopment as well as the hypermobile joints that eventuated on the stage in a peculiar stance, a spectacular bowing technique and an awesome mastery of the fingerboard. He would bring his left hip forward to support his body’s weight. His left shoulder, thrust forward also, would enable him to rest his left elbow on his chest, a buttress against the stress of forceful bowing along with debilitating muscle fatigue. The looseness of the right wrist and shoulder gave pliancy leading to broad acrobatic bowing. The ‘spider’ fingers of his left hand permitted a range on the fingerboard which many attributed to black magic for Paganini was said to have signed a pact with Lucifer to acquire virtuosity as a small child. After his death perhaps due in part to this tale in part also to rumours of gambling and wild debauchery the Church refused to allow him burial on hallowed ground. In consequence his body was moved furtively from place to place until after many years and for reasons still mysterious the Church finally relented. A few paradoxes should be noted as an afterward. Though accused of charlatanism he was rewarded for his skill like no one before him. He loved his violin above all yet once he gambled it away at cards. He accepted wealth and renown from his worshipping admirers but tripled the admission price to his concerts in the face of adverse reviews. While openly irreverent of tradition he still took a princess as his lover and let nations strike medals in his name.

It is scribbled along the body Impossible even to say a word An alphabet has been stored beneath the ground It is a practice alphabet, work of the hand Yet not, not marks inside a box For example, this is a mirror box Spinoza designed such a box and called it the Eighth Sky called it the Nevercadabra House as a joke Yet not, not so much a joke not Notes for Electronic Harp on a day free of sounds (but I meant to write “clouds”) At night these same boulevards fill with snow Lancers and dancers pass a poisoned syringe, as you wrote, writing of death in the snow, Patroclus and a Pharoah on Rue Ravignan It is scribbled across each body Impossible even to name a word Look, you would say, how the sky falls at first gently, then not at all Two chemicals within the firefly are the cause, twin ships, twin nemeses preparing to metamorphose into an alphabet in stone St.-Benoit-sur-Loire to Max Jacob

1 Beneath the writing on the wall is the writing it was designed to obscure. The two together form a third kind 2 There is no writing on the wall’s other side Perhaps this lack constitutes a fourth kind 3 Some of the writing on the wall will be designed as truth some as art 4 It is said to represent a mirror of everyday life in its time 5 “Fabius Naso talks through his asshole and shits out his mouth” for example 6 “Foute les Arabes” for example 7 Certain words and images or parts of images have been chipped away These often turn up for sale at sidewalk stalls before the walls of other cities 8 I too have an image for sale It’s the image of a poem and is to be found on the reverse of this sheet

Yes, I was born on the street known as Glass—as Paper, Scissors or Rock. Several of my ancestors had no hands. Several of my ancestors used their pens in odd ways. A child of seven I prayed for breath. Each day I passed through the mirrored X into droplets of rain congealed around dust. I never regretted this situation. Though patient as an alchemist I failed to learn English. Twenty years later I burned all my furniture. Likewise the beams of my house to fuel the furnace. Once I bought an old boat. I abandoned the tyrannical book of my dreams and wrote about dresses, jewels, furniture and menus eight or ten times in a book of dreams. It sets me to dreaming when I dust it off. Our time is a between time; best to stay out of it. Send an occasional visiting card to eternity or a few stanzas to the living so they won’t suspect we know they don’t exist. Sign them Sincerely Yours, Warmest Regards, Thinking of You or Deepest Regrets. Brown river outside my window, an old boat riding the current. What I like most is to stay in my apartment. So that is my life, pared of anecdotes. I go out occasionally to look at a dance. Otherwise the usual joys, worries and inner mourning. Occasionally in an old boat I navigate the river when I find the time. Water swallows the days. I think maybe that’s all I have to say except that an irregular heart sometimes speaks to me. It says, A candle is consuming a children’s alphabet. It says, Attend to each detail of the future-past. Last night the moon was divided precisely in half. Today a terrifying wind.

The Book of Company which I put down and can’t pick up The Trans-Siberian disappearing, the Blue Train and the Shadow Train Her body with ridges like my skull Two children are running through the Lion Cemetery Five travelers are crossing the Lion Bridge A philosopher in a doorway insists that there are no images He whispers instead: Possible Worlds The Mind-Body Problem The Tale of the Color Harpsichord Skeleton of the World’s Oldest Horse The ring of O dwindles sizzling around the hole until gone False spring is laughing at the snow and just beyond each window immense pines weighted with snow A philosopher spreadeagled in the snow holds out his Third Meditation like a necrotic star. He whispers: archery is everywhere in decline, photography the first perversion of our time Reach to the milky bottom of this pond to know the feel of bone, a knuckle from your grandfather’s thumb, the maternal clavicle, the familiar arch of a brother’s brow He was your twin, no doubt, forger of the unicursal maze My dearest Tania, When I get a good position in the courtyard I study their faces through the haze Dear Tania, Don’t be annoyed, please, at these digressions They are soldering the generals back onto their pedestals for A. C.

All clocks are clouds. Parts are greater than the whole. A philosopher is starving in a rooming house, while it rains outside. He regards the self as just another sign. Winter roses are invisible. Late ice sometimes sings. A and Not-A are the same. My dog does not know me. Violins, like dreams, are suspect. I come from Kolophon, or perhaps some small island. The strait has frozen, and people are walking—a few skating—across it. On the crescent beach, a drowned deer. A woman with one hand, her thighs around your neck. The world is all that is displaced. Apples in a stall at the streetcorner by the Bahnhof, pale yellow to blackish red. Memory does not speak. Shortness of breath, accompanied by tinnitus. The poet’s stutter and the philosopher’s. The self is assigned to others. A room for which, at all times, the moon remains visible. Leningrad cafe: a man missing the left side of his face. Disappearance of the sun from the sky above Odessa. True description of that sun. A philosopher lies in a doorway, discussing the theory of colors with himself the theory of self with himself, the concept of number, eternal return, the sidereal pulse logic of types, Buridan sentences, the lekton. Why now that smoke off the lake? Word and things are the same. Many times white ravens have I seen. That all planes are infinite, by extension. She asks, Is there a map of these gates? She asks, Is this one called Passages, or is that one to the west? Thus released, the dark angels converse with the angels of light. They are not angels. Something else. for Poul Borum