go into all the places you're frightened of
and forget why you came, like the dead
what should I kook for?
what should I do? where?
aside from you, great Foosh,
who is my friend? a little stone,
a lot of dirt, a terrible headache
and more than enough worry about my grave. Hogs
will swill and shit on me, men
will abuse me
take your wedges and you mallet
wipe the sand from the stone, wipe the stone
clean of dead worms and bugs and waste
keep things clean
what am I supposed to do then?
the right words wait in the stone
they'll discover themselves as you chip away,
work faster, don't think as long as you want,
like men who wait
all right here's what I found
what a rush at the last minute
what a cold place, I'm thirsty
this curse better work;
here it is but
what a cold place
to work fast in
I'm getting stiff, this curse
better work:
If you step on me
may your leg become green and gangrenous
and may its heavy flow of filth
stop up your eyes forever, may your face
go to crystal, may your meat be glass
in your throat and your fucking
fail. If you lift your arms in grief
may they never come down and you be known
as Idiot Tree and may you never die
if you pick your nose on my grave
may you be fixed forever in a stupid
attitude, may the children use you
as a jungle gym and turn your muscles to piss,
may you never find a place to sit
and your backbone tire beyond relief,
wherever you stumble around may your heavy feet
squish urus dung and you smell like plague
and you be known
as Fool and Looser and may you never die.
if you throw your garbage on my grave
may its spirit haunt you and sneak into your bed
may your skin become viscous
from the visits of grease, may your woman
become bright with loathing
and snear at your balls. May your nostrils
be stuffed with the spirit of garbage
and you be known as Big Nose and Fat Head
and may you never die.
if you pass my grave and ignore
intruders you hears, may your ears
grow hammers and the mouse's squeak
crash like boulders on boulders and birdsong
shriek without end and the rustle
of high grass cut you like a scythe
and may you never become deaf and be known
as Coward and Alone
and may you never die
whoever drinks in this spirit of Ending
comes at last to these frightening places
and finds rock for his mallet . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . to find words like lined leaves
but unlike the lined leaves they have me
memorable. What I have adds me to you. It is
another place. Talk on the stone moves
for you, like boats on a bay, like cuts on bark,
like tracks on stone snow, like iron urus
on winter clay, like iron urus, pintrpnit!
When I'm wound around with wax, say so
on stone. I leave my mallet, pintrpnit!
I can still turn any way, touch my thigh, feel
the heavy trees whose birds go down,
I tower above the grass. It will not grow
forever but than you thank you that I can chip
all this Ending like tracks on stone snow,
thank you, pintrpnit! + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + the hardest seed.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . to take him into that place and shroud him in wax
embellished with leaves. And as they did they joked and jeered for Pnou
and laughed for Lak. The long men humped young girls
and sang for the Tree Dryer. Too much food and they vomited
for the Big Mover. What the boys bore to the Knom! How
the women danced around the famished bull!
The long men skinned a rabbit live
for the Mean-Sucking-Sponge-Pinipinipni: take it,
grab it, play, flay it again, leave us alone, we are
waxing Pinitou
The reader who has followed the course of the Tablets to this point
may find, upon looking back to Tablet I particularly, that I have bee respon-
sible for occasional jocose invention rather than strict archaeological findings.
I now regret my earlier flippancy - an attitude characteristic of beginnings, a
manifestation of the resistance a man often senses when he faces the probabil-
ity of a terrific demand upon his life energy. Looking back myself to the first
terrific meeting with these ancient poems, I can still sense the desire to keep
them to myself all the while I was straining to produce these translations -
desperately pushing to make available what I so wanted to keep secret and
inviolable
In addition I am worried that I may have mistranslated part of the
preceding Tablet, a combination of dialogue and narrative. How unsteady the
ground I am plowing, walking on, measuring, trying to get the measure of...
There is a growing ambiguity in this work of mine, but I'm not sure where it
lies. Some days I do not doubt that the ambiguity is inherent in the language
of the Tablets themselves; at other times I worry myself sick over the possibility
that I am the variable giving rise to ambiguities. Do I take advantage of the
present unsure state of scholarly expertise? On occasion it almost seems to me
as if I am inventing this sequence, and such a fantasy sucks me into an abyss of
almost irretrievable depression, from which only forced and unpleasurable
exercises in linguistic analysis rescue me.