The Ghost of a Hunter

He reads: What soul suffers in secret, the flesh shows openly.

Deep within, in a region hardly accessible, a bold self-image

sends messages of bloodshed and conquest, which reverberate in

his heart of hearts.

[I forget which hand is writing.]

He does not doubt that he exists.

The five senses have left their mark on him. It is a record of

what has happened to him, but he cannot talk or travel until he

finds a body of water.

A man who has lived on reindeer’s flesh amuses himself with

ripples.

In this cage was once a nightingale. In the echo, new words

for wind.

The usual convulsions, and a green cat. And, after all, months

or years are nothing to him.

[My image contains his body.]

His body contains bodies.

Blemishes.

Inglories.

Vague figures, in a howling wind, and with no notion of

perspective.

Of countless ruined worlds, he would appropriate the

essential emblem. Wall struggling with wall, shadow with shad-

ow.

Thousands of miles a day.

He gazes across an unguarded cemetery—gazes idly, waiting

for new equipment.

As through a fixed window, he finds a kind of space, the

visible world foreshortened.

He does not see deeply, but—still—one thing behind another.

He keeps a tiny bird, folded like a sheet of paper.

Twice two is four—still—and a circle has no angles.

Body sheds shoulder, jaw. However body may appear, the soul

comes back in scars.

[There are no dead. Only names.]

Too close, ruin wrinkles the surface—his breath bothers

reality. The sun pours down. The pots are mended.

An unfolding, from where it is all contained.

The ships have been salvaged. [I do not know what body he

has in mind.] Clothing is resumed. Temples are rebuilt.

“Which body?” we inquire, while all the liars cry out,

“Verily!”

As though all this were in the dark.

Here is a column of soldiers, a heap of apples, an avenue of

trees. Here a swarm of bees, of birds, a row of equidistant lines.

A set of unequal objects distributes the field of vision.

Here is the painted world in an actual image. [I have no

theory for the clouds he sees.]

Source: Analogies of Escape (Burning Deck Press, 1997)