All One Horse

like a whiplash

Like a whiplash. Since time immemorial this phrase has been there, written in the ancient script against the cliffs above our hillside village. Our village is a fortified one, steep and dark, with glistening foliage shadowing the season, and shafts opening up on the unknown. It passes in the land, by a subterranean knowledge, for being the place of poetry. The ground often shifts here, but we hang on. Myth or Ouïdire or Sayso has it that the truncated verse on the rockface was left there by the Original Poet himself, the founder of the fortress. And ever since, poets have been living here, staring at the mystery of the rock, tree and sky, trying to complete the poem. It is known that he or she who penetrates to the source, who uncovers the hidden parabola or equation — for the skyline is the conclusion and we must build back to the beginning — will be assured of immortality. Oh, sweet life.

I am a poet. Like the male of the species I have a beaked nose and a little brindled beard of which I’m inordinately proud. And as any poet worth his salt would, I too must write in the foreign tongue so as to have a translator. My translator is a crippled, blue-eyed young man called Horse. He is so close to me that he could be my brother in the word.

I am also in love. How could I be a poet striving for the unknown and not be in love? Is it not part of my poor human condition, my deathdream? The poet must have wings to fly — higher than the last words of the perfect verse, and wings can only sprout from the intimate communication with love. Love is a necessary discipline, part of the wordsmith’s métier. Ah, sweet love.

So I invite Love over for the evening. And hopefully for the night. She sits across the table from me, and Horse sits next to her with his impassive face and just the occasional tic, throbbing like an imitation of inspiration, under the eyelid. He’s not supposed to be subject to inspiration: he’s the translator! I keep my eye on him. I watch them both. That is, I look at them but my mortal eyes have become dim from peering at the untranslatable, at the inscrutable wall. When Love inclines her head to listen to Horse’s whispered nothings the shifting hair obliterates her shining countenance. How come they have so much to talk about? Must he translate my silences? How come they are so much at ease without having to talk to one another at all? My eyes do not see so well. Only too well… The tics of the heart, like those of a machine that will now never ever get off the ground.

I repair to the toilet to perch over nothingness. Like an angel sickening for take-off. And there I die inside out. The discretion of poetry, all the more polite for never being talked about, is the hiding of the bitterness of evacuation. Shall I spare you the description of wells and black walls, of stench and corruption — that death which is the underground of poetry? For though I know now that I shall never be immortal — and I had to die to have the mirror face of death — I have acquired at least some of the tics of being the poet. Suffice to say that there is a shift, a sickening lurch, an unexpected slope, a long twisting fall, so much like flying, through the bowels of the earth.

Now I was dead. The preceding sentence, I realize, is somewhat decayed, but what I mean is that I can see now from mirror to face, clearly. And I cannot help wanting to know what is happening to Love and to Horse. Are they happy? Are they sad? Love is good and death is bad.

I return. Love has her head inclined, the hair greening her shining face and the silver moisture of her mouth. Horse has a sheet of paper on the table before him. His finger is reading it line by line. The other hand strokes vainly over his little brindled beard, sometimes in passing touching the hooked nose. His yellow eyes are striving to read between the lines. They do not see me. I don’t exist. Apparently they are unaware of the black wind sucking (at) absence just behind the door. This is the way things fall apart. Poetry is always also elimination.

I come closer. I can now hear Horse reading with the soft wing-yearning voice of seduction. Mumble, mumble, mumble, I hear. And then: Mumble mumble mumble Mum mumble mumbo mumb/Like a whiplash.