The Composition of the Text
1 an adjective breathing the window open the insertion’s exact dimension in the rustling of pages or see maybe how the text uses the body see how the work is cosmic and biological and logical in nocturnal voices in auroral explosions in the croaking scratching scraping setting fire here under the soft sky sticking all over the fingers words that speak 2 he turns to the night cries out to it from the window to slow down or existence is the circle is the space is rhythmic swinging harpoon that brushes the lips bronze gestures darkroom a stain left by the water framed frozen hypocritical face dust hypnosis see but how negation modifies the text with possible words with impossible words 3 but the text is a living object furnished with keys the crude resection its effect the incredible osmosis this is the moment you wait for start cutting see how it stretches and swells it’s ready to burst it’s the young anaconda biting its own tail dragging odor of marshes odor coined from the breath of swamps a book a notebook a pen a painless desire without words 4 tired now he becomes aware of his own purposes it’s not difficult to try various tests various experiments improbable preparations for a voyage by now certain you too let yourself become sterile don’t throw open the door untreatable eczema the stamped meat the ruins the slaughterhouse in the text everything accumulates everything melts into vapor remember it’s late remember it’s time to go to say goodbye with a few careful innocuous words 5 after the first beats the material becomes insensible or sensible uncertain private risky privileged declension in terms of organic functions or malfunctions or in terms of chipped awkward monodical alternatives see at this point how the text begins to miss the beat the refusal is to b lame you begin with the same refusal as before but you will accept whatever other duty entrusted to you that has no need of words 6 it’s incoherent it’s undetermined his sickness has no purpose now that we are in the text the fixtures appear to subside a noun is an excess of coughing the beginning of hysteria the vulgar embellishment the shears dripping with blood without falcons without promises without hunting horns without catharsis the woods are full of fragile docile stupid victims the woods are full of love and how it hates love this word 7 before long in the text the final part will have begun catalog of mannerisms and of rapes song and narcoses marking on the calendar with a pencil the delivery date a verb is the parasite the narcissus the rage beneath the skin but see how the machine masticates and bubbles and heats up the music rises the hand corrects the lights go down low the head even lower open your arms wide don’t shut your eyes cancel that word
From The Position of Things: Collected Poems 1961–1992 by Adriano Spatola, translated by Paul Vangelisti. Copyright © 2008 by Adriano Spatola and Paul Vangelisti. Used by permission of Green Integer Press.