From A BOOK OF WITNESS
Spells & Gris-Gris
1. The Case for Memory
I was amok & fearless
twice deceived
for which I sought out
satisfactions
in a tree. Too carelessly
I reached for love
& beaten down
I found you
in a froth or frenzy
spent my days around
the pan yards.
I would ask no help from those
whose trust is weak
but I would buy the latest
& the least.
I live for something practical
– the case for memory –
I set one foot into the space
the others leave abandoned.
Not your lord or slave
I meet you
in an equal clash of wills
& face you down.
I only touch the ground
on Sundays
2. The Burning House
It was always dark.
The red hole�s
wetness threatened
the lost sheep.
Sharp exchanges
were not clearly heard.
Rivers did
not flow.
You did not defend
your brother.
We ascend
toward progress.
I scratch fire &
remove it from your throat.
I run out of
distant shadows
now that no one
tries to stop
the passage from a city
that is drowning.
You must dodge
the summer fire
to free your soul.
You cannot stand
back of the burning
house from which
strangers emerge
like wolves
to run you down.
3. Where God Is Light
The lost in hell
among the rat-faced
killers.
I am with them.
Standing at the tunnel�s mouth
the water underneath
I see the figures floating
raised in air
then pitched into the vortex.
Here where god is light
a brown globe
hangs above
a burning hell.
Eyes turn right.
Hieronymus (my namesake)
let me lift this picture
from your hands.
I cherish walking in your circles.
Do you think the light is wet?
Forget it little father
& go home.
Return the keys to management.
When someone asks
if you believe in god
turn cautious.
There are now angels everywhere.
Never look back.
4. I Have Paid the Price & Lost
God of the universe
manquι
you issue from my mouth.
I watch you dying.
Muscles like flowers gather
at your throat.
You shake a wrist at me.
Your watchband comes apart
& freezes.
I can see you with a babe
propped on your lap
or else a lamb.
Old man with blisters
working against time
you plunge a knife
into my book.
The babe limp as a doll
tilts forward
gagging.
A man in chains
sucks
on a woman�s breast.
Feet walk
without a body.
I have paid the price & lost.
And you?
Have you watched them play
the game of tribute?
And have you failed to pay
& won?
48. The End Is the Beginning
The cylinder grinds against
another cylinder.
It fills my head with wheels
& makes a gnarly sound
like sailing through
the ether. I am halfway
sick & sunken
hoping to right myself
before it�s over.
This is the song I weave
because a text
is like a garment.
I would have my body
dressed in words
after I die. I write it out
with wires
that I read from right
to left. Pallaksch
is perfect German
more & more. Tomorrow
someone rides a bike
under the stars.
A boulevard is better.
Metal cries out loud
the more we sound it.
Smart is dumb. (K. Schwitters)
What�s seen is understood.
I tuck the little balls away
& screen them.
I will meet you on the train.
Good morning.
The end is the beginning
of the end.
49. A Town Called Meter
There is a town called meter
north of Spain.
In it the dead still live
& I have seen them,
who am hungrier than them
not angrier.
I stand among them
with my forged
credentials, calling
on the rest to follow
suit. A bunch of drifters
rubs against me
men with iron spoons
gouging my heart.
I stumble after them
into a town square
sunk below sea level
hard & dry.
A gay parade
files past me
inching up the steps.
I stop a while
my feet in broken flight
over the stones.
The night flows from my eye
the day holds back.
I learn to mimic birds
caught in the brambles.
I have a stark
vocabulary
letting my heart keep time,
my throat in rapture
crying out to you:
the mask! the mask!
in perfect rhythm.
50. I Can�t Say Who I Am
I can�t say who I am (A. Baraka)
but go for it
& speak
as if I knew it.
Time is half the story
so is death.
I run from shadows
to avoid old people
maddened by God.
I follow animals
whose eyes at night
mirror my face.
Seeing myself asleep
I touch my arm.
I celebrate
new forms of sex.
I am frantic
knowing that nobody
has a way out
or a face
more marked than
mine.
I was not
born live. (J. Holzer)
The case for memory
grows weaker
day by day.
The more I know myself
the less I am.
I hold on to a name
because it suits me
but the voice behind it
never was my own.
51. I Come Into the New World
Voices are dumb until
I speak for them.
Knowing the sound
I find myself between
two fires. One
is dark green, one
the color of my mind
asleep. I come into
the new world
where the thought of death
no longer rankles.
It will be good to be
a stranger always
to know the terms by which
we visit back & forth
& sideways.
In the morning I will wear
a suit with shoulders
big as boards. My clothes are
silver plastic.
When I step into the car
it starts to fly.
I play games with
children
where I make
a nose
into an ear.
Like a clock my heart
moves closer
to the burning babe
& stays there.
I will now count
the century
by ones & twos.
This morning
all the voices in my dream
spoke with one voice.
I feel privileged to be here
among you.
From now on
we will live
on borrowed time.
Jerome Rothenberg is an internationally known poet with over sixty books of poetry and several anthologies of traditional and contemporary poetry such as Technicians of the Sacred and Shaking the Pumpkin (American Indian poetry). He has also been involved with various aspects of poetry performance, including radio soundplays written and performed for Westdeutscher Rundfunk (Cologne) and theatrical and musical works with the Living Theater and the Bread & Puppet Theater. Founder of the movement called ethnopoetics, his latest assemblage (co-edited with Pierre Joris) is Poems for the Millennium, a two-volume global anthology of the twentieth-century avant-garde. His most recent book of poems – his eleventh from New Directions – is A Paradise of Poets. Jerome Rothenberg is an internationally known poet with over sixty books of poetry and several anthologies of traditional and contemporary poetry such as Technicians of the Sacred and Shaking the Pumpkin. His latest assemblage (co-edited with Pierre Joris) is Poems for the Millennium, and his most recent book of poems – his eleventh from New Directions – is A Paradise of Poets.
