Disappearances

1

Out of solitude, he begins again---

as if it were the last time

that he would breathe.

and therefore it is now

that he breathes for the first time

beyond the grasp

of the singular.

He is alive, and therefore he is nothing

but what drowns in the fathomless hole

of his eye,

and what he sees

is all that he is not: a city

of the undeciphered

event.

and therefore a language of stones,

since he knows that for the whole of life

a stone

will give way to another stone

to make a wall

and that all these stones

will form the monstrous sum

of particulars.

2

It is a wall. And the wall is death.

Illegible

scrawl of discontent, in the image

and after-image of life—

and the many who are here

though never born,

and those who would speak

to give birth to themselves.

He will learn the speech of this place.

And he will learn to hold his tongue.

For this is his nostalgia: a man.

3

To hear the silence

that follows the word of oneself. Murmur

of the least stone

shaped in the image

of earth, and those who would speak

to be nothing

but the voice that speaks them

to the air.

And he will tell

of each thing he sees in this space,

and he will tell it to the very wall

that grows before him:

and for this, too, there will be a voice,

although it will not be his.

Even though he speaks.

And because he speaks.

4

There are the many—and they are here:

and for each stone he counts among them

he excludes himself,

as if he, too, might begin to breathe

for the first time

in the space that separates him

from himself.

For the wall is a word. And there is no word

he does not count

as a stone in the wall.

Therefore, he begins again,

and at each moment he begins to breathe

he feels there had never been another

time—as if for the time that he lived

he might find himself

in each thing he is not.

What he breathes, therefore,

is time, and he knows now

that if he lives

it is only in what lives

and will continue to live

without him.

5

In the face of the wall—

he divines the monstrous

sum of particulars.

It is nothing.

And it is all that he is.

And if he would be nothing, then let him begin

Where he finds himself, and like any other man

Learn the speech of this place.

For him, too, lives in the silence

that comes before the word

of himself.

6

And of each thing he has seen

he will speak—

the blinding

enumeration of stones,

even to the moment of death—

as if for no other reason

that that he speaks.

Therefore, he says I,

and counts himself

in all that he excludes,

which is nothing,

and because he is nothing

he can speak, which is to say

there is no escape

from the word that is born

in the eye. And whether or not

he would say it,

there is no escape.

7

He is alone. And from the moment he begins to breathe,

he is nowhere. Plural death, born

in the jaws of the singular,

and the word that would build a wall

from the innermost stone

of life.

For each thing that he speaks

he is not—

and in spite of himself

he says I, as if he, too, would begin

to live in all the others

who are not. For the city is monstrous,

and its mouth suffers

no issue

that does not devour the word

of oneself.

Therefore, there are the many,

and all these many lives

shaped into the stones

of a wall,

and he who would begin to breathe

will learn there is nowhere to go

but here.

Therefore, he begins again,

as if it were the last time

that he would breathe.

For there is no more time. And it is the end of time

that begins.