Calibrations of Khlebnikov

Khlebnikov on empty pointless field of carbon night:

empty field ignites the text, the One the Only Book,

pointless field accommodates the poet’s burning text.

(Terminal velocity poet, field, and text attain.)

Khlebnikov when stepping out was sometimes struck by birds.

Once, when sculpting air outside, he struck some moving birds.

Khlebnikov upon a time found one dimension lost:

in radial volume sank he down, without and with no height,

to excavated floors of black labyrinth he droppt.

Some other time, Khlebnikov is spun ’round in an arc,

a spiral of height or a spiral of depth,

to find himself possessed of spiral voice.

Yet always at all times his hidden space:

Khlebnikov so cloaked in time his lice forget to squirm,

Caucasian trains and Caspian ships refuse to let them board.

The cayenne calendars, paprika clocks of capitals

were never synchronized with the archaic King of Time—

the defects of their months, their minutes lost and soon forgot,

abandoned in a blank abyss from which no days returned,

their crusts and crumbs dispersed and disappeared—

Khlebnikov saw nothing to retrieve or memorize:

the pages Khlebnikov has amply read and justly torn

become blue butterflies to all imperiled minotaurs.

—as from the Second Sea of blue do frozen arrows fall,

up through the selfsame Sea of blue our poisoned arrows fly:

and undeterred does Khlebnikov stretch out, still resolute—

“Man seems on his own carbon choked to death”—

white storks and mountain sparrows, banded warblers, all agree:

from his remote and rustic roost, the King of Time has ruled,

kind Velimir the First enunciating his decrees.

A Quotidian Mystery

Some die from butter on baked potatoes

My survival’s a cellular lineup

tangled like cat-played yarn

mother’s blameless sins vitiated her capacities

father’s gut guilty as a politician’s

peripheral aunts and ancestors never met

would barely rescind my surmises

My 91st wasn’t a party it wasn’t

a dirge

no one invited

nobody came

some were thinking of me

I thought

a January cloudburst delivered like an overture

let me know there’s a leak in my roof

Though it rained all day

I contained a strange happiness, never disclaiming

the pills I count coldly

while I take in the sunsets Capricorns get

in winter

my sense of wonder

and when it’s not about beauty

I think about hands

catching CNN at day’s end

a woman’s prayerful hands

in Kyiv begging a journalist

For what, for what?