Gondwana Read online

  which hit, or did not hit, the only target. As he stood

  at a bridge one time, ancestor-like, master yet dumb-

  struck, aghast at her disclosure to the light of day, the

  lovelorn brightness escaping from her aura while lines

  began to form—longer and longer ran toward a book,

  with a collapse of stars to ground as yet another night

  rose (yes, again) to sky. As a result of that: now, do not

  write, do not communicate: there’s no one here to hold

  your voice, your hand as if they mattered—host gone

  toward another place, his guests unwelcome, sight broken

  down, day never now to shine again, nor even stars dead

  high up there, nor any light whatever. You: silence now.

  Trobardao Leu, & Clus & Ric

  ix. the longing & desire for justice condign to the end: a preseason sale

  I thought of the limitless vastness of the universe;

  I wept for the long affliction of man’s life.

  Those that had gone before I should never see

  And those yet to come I should never know of.

  —Chu Ci (Songs of the South), circa 300 BC, tr. by David Hawkes

  Dear Reader:

  Before I can return your greeting, or

  pronounce farewell, I wish to offer you

  the unique privilege of a preseason sale.

  In order for you to participate,

  I shall require the following information:

  1) your name 2) your d.o.b. 3) your age 4) all your i.ds.

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  20) your c.i.a., your m.i.six, or k.g.b. i.d.s 21) your tempe-

  rature 22) your blood pressure 23) Number of your pater-

  nal granny’s teeth 24) Number of your maternal granny’s

  teeth 25) Length of your penis if a male (in 16ths of an inch

  por favor) or length of your vagina if a female (in 16ths

  of an inch por favor) 26) your anal circumference

  (in 16ths of an inch por favor) 27) your race or ethnic affi-

  liation 28) your faith or lack of it 29) your education (gra-

  duate only) 30) your ism if any 31) the date of your last prize,

  and/or: award, review, encomium, bribe, or quid pro quo and/

  or: all copulations for service rendered.

  The above in triplicate or more if it please you.

  In addition: 32) your best guess as to the date of

  the achievement of universal lunacy 33) your best guess as to

  the date of lattermost extinction 34) your best guess

  as to the date of Exitus Generis Humani 35) your best guess

  as to the devoration of this planet by the sun.

  This survey is for the purpose of ensuring

  that you receive all your benefits

  and in no way is it designed to enrich us.

  Your answers may be recorded

  for technical or educational purposes and may be

  hand delivered, e-mailed, texted, phoned, faxed, snail-mailed,

  couriered or dumped (if not sent by passenger pigeon) to the

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  Happy,” Alt/Neue Mejiko, 87500.

  Leave space for the development of future questions.

  Do not forget to sign your bio-signature.

  Please enjoy the last of this conversation

  and have nice days.

  x. die unendlichen

  i)

  Where there is Mood. The sinkhole drops to pit of

  the abyss which translates into Hades. The mood—

  whatever can be said of it—begins to lighten. No

  thing’s as terrible as the true nightmare. The darkness

  turns to shades of gray, life casts off the impossible:

  not more, no never more than practice of the possible.

  But a mind stumbles from one state to another. When

  deep image is of a hanging bridge high over cliffs,

  a neck caught in a noose high over cliffs. Though this

  would sever vows and promises. How is it possible

  this thing survival? No recognition on our part. Each

  day warrants another day, the elevator takes mood up

  and takes mood down while the desire to live and the

  desire to die fail in reconciliation. Broken over abyss.

  Pit deep. Friend said “It comes to all: do not invoke it.”

  (When arguing it would be best to leave, to disappear,

  to fail to live the full of days allotted.) The heart no

  longer anchored anywhere. Mind fails to recognize

  its denizens, those that would once have manifested

  lust to bones and sinews. A hesitation on a brink might

  or might not design salvation. A lack of any appetite.

  The prophets fail to see or apprehend their prophecy.

  The sense that, day by day, one thought fails to con-

  nect with all the other thoughts that do belong to it. Is

  losing it. It mind you: it is losing it. It can no longer

  apprehend the edge of things, tell edge from middle,

  or from the break at which an edge desists. Fi-nal, End.

  ii)

  How terrible: the

  count of people who do not exist. Who cannot prove

  in any sense of mood to be alive. Yet are undead. And

  what is then primarily their essence above all is to be

  silent. That’s so—they’re silent. As the dying world

  crumbles around them. Oh but their silence is excee-

  ding loud! You hear no other noises as long as you’re

  on Earth. It breaks you down into the smallest shards.

  Mood in its harshness fails to encompass you—as if

  you could receive it even so! But, here and there, a

  voice—not that loud kind of theirs, but like a deer’s

  entombed within a forest, a deer astonishingly rare:

  no hunter’s ever even seen it. Correction to the norm.

  Faith is but a marinade known to the multitude as “Faith.”

  Religion’s but belief in, oh, “Belief.” The replication of

  synanthropic species. You might, then almost say, on

  target to extinction. Mood closes into theme and lasts.

  iii)

  Water. Flood cataracts inward, dictating all before it.

  In poisoned oceans, whales at polluted krill: danger

  of feasting. Now ice. Shatters to Thule’s coruscations.

  Bears drowning in white jackets without a necktie on.

  Air. Pollution radiates around the globe. Birds choke

  and children wretch in multi-million nests and cribs.

  Earth. Mud slithers down hillsides over the indigent

  from Aberfan to China. Fire. Forests never recorded

  collapse on megaplans of future dwellings. National

  borders swell in value as politicians swap their wealths.

  Imperials buy patrimony in exotic lands to feed their

  own home populations—exotics drown in famines.

 
Water flowing both ways blocked, suddenly arrested,

  dam-circumscribed, shored up in altitudes. Down-

  river others crave the water needed for their crops. It

  is unending. Interminable. Insufferable. It continues.

  And so: Let there be twenty times a year more floods

  like these, fires like these, earthquakes like these. Let

  migrants steal the ground under their feet, whole peo-

  ples running from disaster to disaster. Vast populations

  perish; millions of surplus newborns perish. Call on

  the great crusades. Any crusades to catapult foul war.

  Should humankind be on its way to the crimson planet:

  even the giant Mars can be invoked among more recent

  gods. The water wars—air, fire, all population wars:

  let these erupt and flourish. Earth: open up your guts so

  that whole armies sink in you yearning for mother love.

  Let earth depopulate to space as remnants feed on roots.

  And you? “I shall not willingly destroy this life, but if.

  But if the final, ultimate, desires at me I’ll not refuse.”

  Would you believe this as a hopeful cry to the awakened?

  Copyright © 2017 by Nathaniel Tarn

  All rights reserved. Except for brief passages quoted in a newspaper, magazine, radio, television, or website review, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the Publisher.

  Thanks to the editors of the following magazines and anthologies in which some of these poems first appeared: Contemporary Poetry: Nature and Myth (Corbel Stone Press, 2017), Fact-Simile, Hambone, Jacket, Lute & Drum, New American Literature, Poetry Salzburg, Resist Much / Obey Little: Inaugural Poems to the Resistance (Spuyten Duyvil: Dispatches Editions, 2017), Seedings (Duration Press), Stonecutter, TriQuarterly, and Zen Monster.

  Thanks also to Christopher Benson at The Fisher Press in Santa Fe, New Mexico, for first publishing “Il Piccolo Paradiso” in an edition of twenty copies with his photographs in 2015.

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  First published as a New Directions Paperbook (NDP1381) in 2017

  Design by Eileen Baumgartner

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Tarn, Nathaniel, author.

  Title: Gondwana & other poems / Nathaniel Tarn.

  Description: New York, NY : New Directions Publishing, 2017.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2017009769 | ISBN 9780811225021 (alk. paper)

  Classification: LCC PS3570.A635 A6 2017 | DDC 811/.54—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017009769

  eISBN: 9780811225038

  New Directions Books are published for James Laughlin

  by New Directions Publishing Corporation

  80 Eighth Avenue, New York 10011

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