Part 1: As Seen Through a Telescope


My brother had had bad dreams lately, because a tiger was brought in unsafely into the room where my father slept. Whose myriad dreams, of his father’s altar lamps, of burning incense, of forgotten courtyards, of my years of coming home late, filled the dog-swept air.

In his dreams I translate Friedrich Hölderlin’s IN LOVELY BLUE: In lovely blue flowers / the metal church tower. As seen through a telescope, the hammered sheet metal of the belfry blinds all oculai. The cry of the swallows, a most touching blue. When I wake, out of fear, or constipation, I piss in the outhouse. The sun goes up over it and colors the sheets.

My mother finds me under the pear tree. I had had bad dreams, since the tiger was here, brought in unsafely. On the stone bench the tiger sits, beautiful. The windows, same: bell-like, gates of beauty. Namely because the gates are real, actual gates, and they're like forest trees. I fell; the tree falls,

I meet the dog and loan him a book. His vision is failing…crystal reading glasses, dropped calls, mucus, ivy dripping from the belfry—But why would he be in the belfry? If someone in the belfry goes downstairs, it’s quiet. Going to return a book and leave the library.

Things become simpler. Olympia, ballerinas. Empty [speculating]. When dogs don’t read as much as they used to. [Something serious emerges from his side (a ghost.)] Pins and needles, optical vision, my thin corneas. I am afraid to stop seeing. But, as simple as this letter is, we must believe in it.




Part 2: Bell Passing Through a Soap Bubble


The flat letters still. Above all not circulated, per se, but discarded. Why we weave errors into rugs. With tiger blood, fill up father’s water barrel. With plantains, wash his hands. He ventures in to the courtyard at night, running his hands along the wall, to piss under the pear tree. During the day he sleeps. The image stays flat.

When Rachel read my Hölderlin translation two years ago, she wrote me: “I will have to write the death song / I will not write an essay.” May is when sheer. So the letter, that tactility, becomes filled with dead dogs; or a postcard. May is when sheer effort and life.

The ribbon carrier gunked with pear juice and Apulian grain. My father wakes as pears rain down in the courtyard. Sharp cries from the belfry. This is what I think instead: It’s great.  Yeah, but poetically, we live on this earth. In this new flatness of letters, distance becomes skewed. Like a bell passing through a soap buttress.

Reflections curve, the shadow of the night cranes with stars, I stole everything. Even this very poem, its form, is borrowed from Vlad. When I say it like that, he heaves up a new image. Is there anything to measure left on earth? Nope.

Charlotte writes me on butcher paper, so I write her on newsprint, and finish half before falling asleep. On newsprint, even flowers look beautiful, because they bloom under the sun. Next I translate Hölderin’s Tiger Songs, from Corfu. Myrtle, In the courtyard, the tigers sleep peacefully on newsprint. That’s how they get their stripes.




Part 3: Wonderful Fried Eggs


Remember those wonderful fried eggs? I mean, hungry, yes. I know you well, but you’re out of sight. Do I want to be a comet? Or, is my brain doing this to me? Tiger brain. I only have one heart, and three brains. Me, Renard, and the tiger. My body- the comet. Penzey spiced. Watching Charlotte pour rust-colored wine into the painter’s cup. Like delicious fried eggs. Myrtle flow,  like a egg bursting through a tripwire.

Your letter, and the thoughts I had on it, in the near past and the close future, revealed an image to me: An egg flowing through a tripwire. Or, pigeons by the pear tree. Love, as me, mettled belfry, stank of swamps. I saw the sun, and it stank of swamps. A dog returns a library book.