orgiastic frenzy. The lamentations of flutes, the double chant of
wind through our slender bones, the cracking of our bones distantly remembered
when on beds of down the worship we inspire turned to lust.
As we walked along, rockets burst from the
street lamps; we swallowed the asphalt road with a jungle roar and the houses
with their closed eyes and geranium eyelashes; swallowed the telegraph poles
trembling with messages; swallowed stray cats, trees, hills, hedges, Sabina’s labyrinthian smile on the keyhole. The door moaning,
opening. Her smile closed. A nightingale disleafing melliferous honeysuckle. Honey-suckled. Fluted fingers. The
house opened its green gate mouth and swallowed us. The bed was floating.
The record was scratched, the crooning broken.
The pieces cut our feet. It was dawn and she was lost. I put back the houses on
the road, aligned the telegraph poles along the river and the stray cats
jumping across the road. I put back the hills. The road came out of my mouth
like a velvet ribbon—it lay there serpentine. The houses opened their eyes. The
keyhole had an ironic curve, like a question mark. The woman’s mouth.
I was carrying her fetiches ,
her marionettes, her fortune teller’s cards worn at the corners like the edge
of a wave. The windows of the city were stained and splintered with rainlight and the blood she drew from me with each lie,
each deception. Beneath the skin of her cheeks I saw ashes: would she die
before we had joined in perfidious union? The eyes, the hands, the senses that
only women have.
There is no mockery between women. One lies
down at peace as on one’s own breast.
Sabina was no longer embracing men and women.
Within the fever of her restlessness the world was losing its human shape. She
was losing the human power to fit body to body in human completeness. She was
delimiting the horizons, sinking into planets without axis, losing her polarity
and the divine knowledge of integration, of fusion. She was spreading herself
like the night over the universe and found no god to lie with. The other half
belonged to the sun, and she was at war with the sun and light. She would
tolerate no bars of light on open books, no orchestration of ideas knitted by a
single theme; she would not be covered by the sun, and half the universe
belonged to him; she was turning her serpent back to that alone which might
overshadow her own stature giving her the joy of fecundation.
Come away with me, Sabina, come to my island.
Come to my island of red peppers sizzling over slow braseros ,
Moorish earthen jars catching the gold water, palm trees, wild cats fighting,
at dawn a donkey sobbing, feet on coral reefs and sea-anemones, the body
covered with long seaweeds, Melisande’s hair hanging
over the balcony at the Opera Comique , inexorable
diamond sunlight, heavy nerveless hours in the violaceous shadows, ash-colored rocks and olive trees, lemon trees with lemons hung like
lanterns at a garden party, bamboo shoots forever trembling, soft-sounding
espadrilles, pomegranate spurting blood, a flute-like Moorish chant, long and
insistent, of the ploughmen, trilling, swearing, trilling and cursing, dropping
perspiration on the earth with the seeds.
Your beauty drowns me, drowns the core of me.
When your beauty burns me I dissolve as I never dissolved before man. From all
men I was different, and myself, but I see in you that part of me which is you.
I feel you in me; I feel my own voice becoming heavier, as if I were drinking
you in, every delicate thread of resemblance being soldered by fire and one no
longer detects the fissure.
Your lies are not lies, Sabina. They are arrows
flung out of your orbit by the strength of your fantasy. To nourish illusion.
To destroy reality. I will help you: it is I who will invent lies for you and
with them we will traverse the world. But behind our lies I am dropping
Ariadne’s golden thread—for the greatest of all joys is to be able to retrace
one’s lies, to
wind through our slender bones, the cracking of our bones distantly remembered
when on beds of down the worship we inspire turned to lust.
As we walked along, rockets burst from the
street lamps; we swallowed the asphalt road with a jungle roar and the houses
with their closed eyes and geranium eyelashes; swallowed the telegraph poles
trembling with messages; swallowed stray cats, trees, hills, hedges, Sabina’s labyrinthian smile on the keyhole. The door moaning,
opening. Her smile closed. A nightingale disleafing melliferous honeysuckle. Honey-suckled. Fluted fingers. The
house opened its green gate mouth and swallowed us. The bed was floating.
The record was scratched, the crooning broken.
The pieces cut our feet. It was dawn and she was lost. I put back the houses on
the road, aligned the telegraph poles along the river and the stray cats
jumping across the road. I put back the hills. The road came out of my mouth
like a velvet ribbon—it lay there serpentine. The houses opened their eyes. The
keyhole had an ironic curve, like a question mark. The woman’s mouth.
I was carrying her fetiches ,
her marionettes, her fortune teller’s cards worn at the corners like the edge
of a wave. The windows of the city were stained and splintered with rainlight and the blood she drew from me with each lie,
each deception. Beneath the skin of her cheeks I saw ashes: would she die
before we had joined in perfidious union? The eyes, the hands, the senses that
only women have.
There is no mockery between women. One lies
down at peace as on one’s own breast.
Sabina was no longer embracing men and women.
Within the fever of her restlessness the world was losing its human shape. She
was losing the human power to fit body to body in human completeness. She was
delimiting the horizons, sinking into planets without axis, losing her polarity
and the divine knowledge of integration, of fusion. She was spreading herself
like the night over the universe and found no god to lie with. The other half
belonged to the sun, and she was at war with the sun and light. She would
tolerate no bars of light on open books, no orchestration of ideas knitted by a
single theme; she would not be covered by the sun, and half the universe
belonged to him; she was turning her serpent back to that alone which might
overshadow her own stature giving her the joy of fecundation.
Come away with me, Sabina, come to my island.
Come to my island of red peppers sizzling over slow braseros ,
Moorish earthen jars catching the gold water, palm trees, wild cats fighting,
at dawn a donkey sobbing, feet on coral reefs and sea-anemones, the body
covered with long seaweeds, Melisande’s hair hanging
over the balcony at the Opera Comique , inexorable
diamond sunlight, heavy nerveless hours in the violaceous shadows, ash-colored rocks and olive trees, lemon trees with lemons hung like
lanterns at a garden party, bamboo shoots forever trembling, soft-sounding
espadrilles, pomegranate spurting blood, a flute-like Moorish chant, long and
insistent, of the ploughmen, trilling, swearing, trilling and cursing, dropping
perspiration on the earth with the seeds.
Your beauty drowns me, drowns the core of me.
When your beauty burns me I dissolve as I never dissolved before man. From all
men I was different, and myself, but I see in you that part of me which is you.
I feel you in me; I feel my own voice becoming heavier, as if I were drinking
you in, every delicate thread of resemblance being soldered by fire and one no
longer detects the fissure.
Your lies are not lies, Sabina. They are arrows
flung out of your orbit by the strength of your fantasy. To nourish illusion.
To destroy reality. I will help you: it is I who will invent lies for you and
with them we will traverse the world. But behind our lies I am dropping
Ariadne’s golden thread—for the greatest of all joys is to be able to retrace
one’s lies, to
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