Let’s not get carried away with meta-politeness. Literary theory is simply another kind of
literature. It is as much philosophy as the warning on a package of nuts: May Contain
Nuts. It is as much pornography as devouring a cashew the shape of a lover’s dimple. It is
as much eulogy as one can compose for a zit. Would that rhyme were so simple.


Poem is reprinted from The Making of Collateral Beauty (Tupelo Press, 2006).

It was 8 p.m. as the voice from the tape recorder announced:
“Five elements in organically divided form.
Here speaks Fluxus/Fluxus
Here speaks Fluxus/Fluxus
Now element 2 has climbed up to element 1
Now element 1 has climbed down to element 2…"
[repeat; repeat, etc.]
( ”-" )

***
сусальным золотом горят
в лесах рождественские елки;
в кустах игрушечные волки
глазами страшнимы гляадят

О, вещая моя печаль,
О, тихая моя свобода
И неживого небосвода
Всегда смеющийся хрусталь!

* * *

Оттого все неудачи,
Что я вижу пред собой
Ростовщичий глаз кошачий -
Внук он зелени стоячей
И купец травы морской.

Там, где огненными щами
Угощается Кащей, -
С говорящими камнями
Он на счастье ждет гостей, -
Камни трогает клещами,
Щиплет золото гвоздей.

У него в покоях спящих
Кот живет не для игры -
У того в зрачках горящих
Клад зажмуренной горы.
И в зрачках тех леденящих,
Умоляющих, просящих
Шароватых искр пиры.

what if a much of a which of a wind
gives the truth to summer's lie;
bloodies with dizzying leaves the sun
and yanks immortal stars awry?
blow king to beggar and queen to seem
(blow friend to fiend: blow space to time)
--when skies are hanged and oceans drowned,
the single secret will still be man

what if a keen of a lean wind flays
screaming hills with sleet and snow:
strangles valleys by ropes of thing
and stifles forests in white ago?
Blow hope to terror; blow seeing to blind
(blow pity to envy and soul to mind)
--whose hearts are mountains, roots are trees,
it's they shall cry hello to the spring

what if a dawn of a doom of a dream
bites this universe in two,
peels forever out of his grave
and sprinkles nowhere with me and you?
Blow soon to never and never to twice
(blow life to isn't: blow death to was)
--all nothing's only our hugest home;
the most who die, the more we live

(e.e. cummings)