his relation to the things of which he wrote always included a degree of irony and reserve, the intimacy with which time and things faced each other in his writing was always prolonged to the threshold of infinity. But now one can’t help but feel that, in writing this way, he was writing reality, not speculation. Or perhaps it is more accurate to say that he was writing permanence, that strange temporal field of the endless paradox in which plenitude and absence coincide.
“Now speech has lost its speed, it lags as the nights lag, becoming briefer and nevertheless longer. Time marvelously stills, involving one in its dance, allowing itself to stay in place in innumerable gradations. Hitherto unseen, but always having been, simple understanding doesn’t go away: the world whirling in a beautiful absence of will, in which glimmers an unintelligible belief in everything, to the point of idiotic tears, when one sets out for milk in the morning and stops at every step.”2
LYN HEJINIAN
ENDARKENMENT
to Alexey M. Parshchikov (Sunday, May 10, 2009)
I don’t believe that it ended like that, don’t believe it at all, no.
Over there, nothing ever ends, over there, there’s an ocean of air.
Over there, if you want to be with her forever, there’s nothing terrible
about it,
Because the terrible doesn’t exist, there is only poverty, and there is nothing
Terrible about that, there is nothing more terrible than what’s terrible,
Like love, which is beneath all beggars, beneath everyone, everything,
But happiness lies elsewhere, not in being a madman, but in seeming
To be one, and in being at the same time a madman who will say,
When the occasion is right, that there’s nothing in the world that’s sweeter
than being an idiot.
We’ll end there, because everyone who is looking at us
Has low-set eyes, they are magnificent in the plaster of poses and speech.
Close-set eyes, long plaster sleeves,
The hands are slow, disappear from sight. They are light at the passing
of blood and
After a retort. Who taught them the art of direct speech? In which
there isn’t a single
Word about how the conifer needles clung to the shoulders,
when they didn’t exist
In the first place, and won’t, because what will exist
are Parshchikov’s dirigibles,
His flock, my diopters, addresses, telephones, and no oil at all.
[G.T.]
Алексею М. Парщикову воскресенье, 10 мая 2009 г.
Я не верю, что так закончилось, вообще не верю, нет.
Там никогда ничего не заканчивается, там—море воздуха.
Там, если ты хочешь быть с ней навсегда, ничего страшного,
Поскольку страшного нет вообще, есть одна нищета, а в ней
Ничего страшного нет, ничего страшней нет того, что страшно,
Как и любовь, которая ниже всех нищих, всех ниже всего,
Но счастье в другом, не в том, чтобы быть безумным, но
Чтобы казаться, но быть в это же время безумным, который
При случае скажет, что нет ничего слаще на свете быть идиотом.
На этом закончим, потому что у всех тех, кто смотрит на нас
Низко посаженные глаза, они великолепны в гипсе поз и речи.
Близко посаженные глаза, длинные гипсовые рукава,
Руки медленны, исчезают из взгляда. Легки на уходе крови и
После реплики. Кто учил их мастерству прямой речи? В которой
Ни слова о том, как хвоя прикипала к плечам, когда их не было
Изначально, и не будет, поскольку будут дирижабли Парщикова
Его стада и мои диоптрии, адреса, телефоны, и никакой нефти.
to Trofim K. Dragomoshchenko
Is the fault really yours? Mine? They say it’s verging on spring,
and you are as old as you’ve always been,
and—moreover—no longer appear in my dreams.
That last time you were saying … But what?
What truly matters? To speak: is that not enough? or too much?
Not a single horizon can be as distinct
as the one charted by the stone’s fall.
That rivers run, gathering the arterial force of space?
Grammar doesn’t abide muteness, shards of water,
the incision of a fish, the whooping of birds from beyond the hill at sunrise?
Underwater scales, of course, and fins, shade, bare feet.
And some others—like cells in a long arithmetic book.
Soon
