arbutus

Sun
by Michael Palmer

Write this. We have burned all their villages

Write this. We have burned all the villages and the people in them

Write this. We have adopted their customs and their manner of dress

Write this. A word may be shaped like a bed, a basket of tears or an X

In the notebook it says, It is the time of mutations, laughter at jokes,
secrets beyond the boundaries of speech

I now turn to my use of suffixes and punctuation, closing Mr. Circle
with a single stroke, tearing the canvas from its wall, joined to her,
experiencing the same thoughts at the same moment, inscribing
them on a loquat leaf

Write this. We have begun to have bodies, a now here and a now
gone, a past long ago and one still to come

Let go of me for I have died and am in a novel and was a lyric poet,
certainly, who attracted crowds to mountaintops. For a nickel I will
appear from this box. For a dollar I will have text with you and
answer three questions

First question. We entered the forest, followed its winding paths, and
emerged blind

Second question. My townhouse, of the Jugendstil, lies by
Darmstadt

Third question. He knows he will wake from this dream, conducted
in the mother-tongue

Third question. He knows his breathing organs are manipulated by
God, so that he is compelled to scream

Third question. I will converse with no one on those days of the week
which end in y

Write this. There is pleasure and pain and there are marks and signs.
A word may be shaped like a fig or a pig, an effigy or an egg
but
there is only time for fasting and desire, device and design, there is
only time to swerve without limbs, organs or face into a
scientific
silence, pinhole of light

Say this. I was born on an island among the dead. I learned language
on this island but did not speak on this island. I am writing to you
from this island. I am writing to the dancers from this island. The
writers do not dance on this island

Say this. There is a sentence in my mouth, there is a chariot in my
mouth. There is a ladder. There is a lamp whose light fills empty
space and a space which swallows light

A word is beside itself. Here the poem is called What Speaking Means
to Say
though I have no memory of my name

Here the poem is called Theory of the Real, its name is Let's Call This,
and its name is called A Wooden Stick. It goes yes-yes, no-no. It goes
one and one

I have been writing a book, not in my native language, about violins
and smoke, lines and dots, free to speak and become the things we
speak, pages which sit up, look around and row resolutely toward
the setting sun

Pages torn from their spines and added to the pyre, so that they will
resemble thought

Pages which accept no ink

Pages we've never seen--first called Narrow Street, then Half a
Fragment, Plain of Jars or Plain of Reeds, taking each syllable in her
mouth, shifting position and passing it to him

Let me say this. Neak Luong is a blur. It is Tuesday in the hardwood
forest. I am a visitor here, with a notebook

The notebook lists My New Words and Flag above White. It claims
to have no inside
only characters like A-against-Herself, B, C, L and
N, Sam, Hans Magnus, T. Sphere, all speaking in the dark with their
hands

G for Gramsci or Goebbels, blue hills, cities, cities with hills,
modern and at the edge of time

F for alphabet, Z for A, an H in
an arbor, shadow, silent wreckage, W or M among stars

What last. Lapwing. Tesseract. X perhaps for X. The villages are
known as These Letters--humid, sunless. The writing occurs on
their walls