The Tunnel Read online

  I said, if you’re so hungry eat a rafter, but do not eat a maniac.

  Meanwhile, a maniac in the attic, with a hatchet, began to attack the sky.

  You’ll make it rain, you do that, I said, you’ll wound it to rain.

  The fire was eating an old lady. I said, one old lady, yes, and a child for dessert.

  I said to the fire that it may take a siesta in the maniac’s bed. But the fire wanted to eat the bed. You are too hungry, fire, I said. But, by that time the fire’s whole family had moved in, and was eating out the corners of the asylum — Hey, that’s where the dusts have built their cities.

  But the fires will not listen as they do not like to starve.

  So I called the lunatics out of the attic and said to them that this is a war of nutrition, and that they must eat the fire, which, if not, will eat them.

  But they said, we are not fire-eaters, we are sword-swallowers …

  Little Dead Man

  Onward, little dead man, said a little man passing through a land of butterflies, purple and white, yellow and black, all in flux; they are not told from the flowers they drink, nor are the wind fluttered flowers from those they host.

  This is a land of vibrating velvet. Eating itself. Forming itself. This is the land of death. Endless. Absurd.

  A Child Walking Out Of a Cow’s Behind

  A door would wish to swing out upon its hinges … But no one comes, said an old woman looking at a door with binoculars from a tree. A door is the difference between in and out.

  A cow is eating a child. No, a child is passing behind a cow.

  One can see. One looks. Yet one cannot see what is behind the door.

  I believe a cow is eating a child. No, a child is passing behind a cow.

  What if once on the other side of the door there remains only the urgency to use the door again?

  Do my binoculars entitle me to know something?

  Were I a door I would wish to swing out upon my hinges, and allow my room to fill with what has come from the outside.

  Is that cow eating a child?

  Now I see a child walking out of a cow’s behind.

  Rat

  In a shack on the wall was a tree in a window. But here lived a rat. A rat is not tall enough to see a tree from a window, that a rat must go out of doors entirely and say, I see a tree.

  Now where the rat was a man was. Where a man was a rat was to be. No one said, hello rat, because no one said, hello.

  A rat’s tail is a rat’s tail. A rat-tail is dragged by the dragger who is a rat. (Rats travel by boat which is so much better than swimming, and good eats are had at sea).

  It is lonely, but a rat is busy being a rat. Every day the rat forms itself into a rat.

  In the vicinity the moon was seen if anything decided to name it. The window flows to the floor on a ray of moon. Time in silvered light.

  Does a rat act for all rats? A rat drags a rat-tail, for all rats, to a dead moth who is dead as all moths are or will be, and eats the moth, its wings and antennae …

  A rat is not a rat unless a rat climbs out of itself and sees a rat. And even then a rat might say: I’m a Maryanne, the daughter of man.

  A rat has no chance of being a rat, until the great God says, arise rat, thou art a rat; thou art come to be that which thou namest thyself after the name I give thee …

  In the Time of Commerce

  Between the man and the woman is part of the man, which has been thought to be part of the woman, given to the man to be given back to the woman in the time of their commerce.

  The window is described by moonlight on the further wall.

  Paying the Captain

  We get on a boat, never mind if it sinks, we pay the captain by throwing him overboard. And when he gets back onboard we say, captain, please don’t be angry. And he forgives us this time. And so we throw him overboard again just to make sure we have fully paid the price we have set upon our passage. When he gets back onboard he is not anxious to forgive us, and he would like it much better if we would get off his boat. There is nothing left for us to do but to repay him and hope that this time it will be enough. And so we throw him overboard again. When he comes aboard again we say, now this must be the last of this, we will pay no more, we want the journey to begin.

  But it seems there will be no journey since we have gotten the captain used to a good thing. And so we must spend the rest of our days throwing the captain overboard.

  Dark Friends

  One who is now in proximity to a door decides that he shall open a door and step into the place that the door is entrance to.

  After he closes a door, which he is now doing, he will’ve come where he must decide again. As he sits behind the door the decision forms; so that he rises and opens the door again and passes out from the place of his last deciding.

  His mother says, don’t be coming in and out, the flies follow you.

  They are dark friends buzzing something of song and something of wisdom; friendly ones against whom the woman of the house has set her hand. They are the people of wings.

  Again he would have to do with the door. The decision made. The passage accomplished. Point of rest, and the decision again being made. Made. And the passage …

  His mother said, either stay in or stay out; the house is full of flies.

  One who is now in proximity breaks this proximity and is flying and buzzing away with a host of dark friends who are buzzing and flying.

  II

  from What A Man Can See 1969

  What a Man Can See

  There was a tower where a man said I can live. After grief it can happen that he comes. Then he saw summer its field and its tree. He heard the wind and he saw a cloud.

  The Road

  There was a road that leads him to go to find a certain time where he sits.

  Smokes quietly in the evening by the four legged table wagging its (well why not) tail, friendly chap.

  Hears footsteps, looks to find his own feet gone.

  The road absorbs everything with rumors of sleep.

  And then he looked for himself and even he was gone.

  — Looked for the road and even that …

  There Was

  A man who said lobster when a basket was in a house, where a child eats an orange to please a ceiling, or dreams and dies.

  There was an orange that had a dream in a fruitbowl, the orange dreamed that at the age of puberty life is very good when it is.

  The man said lobster when a basket was in a house, but secretly removed by agents of the statue which stood quietly in the square.

  The ceiling pleased grew displeased and then grew pleased again.

  To have said lobster when a basket is not in a house is to have said lobster when a basket is not in a house, he did not like to say lobster when a basket is not in a house.

  The ceiling was quite displeased and so it grew pleased again.

  In a house there was once a child who was eaten by an orange, or did it dream and die.

  The agents of the statue secretly removed the ceiling as it slumbered in the afternoon.

  Once upon a time there was a room where an orange and a basket and a ceiling lived, this room took up residence in a house as it is better than to be living in a forest where you cannot be cheerful anymore.

  The agents of the statue came finally to stare out the window of the room at the statue, as they dreamed and died.

  There was an eaten who was oranged by a child to ceiling a please and a lobster that said basket when a house was in a man.

  Memory and the Sun

  There was once a memory of a person that would not go even though a person had said I do not like memories and died, for there was a habit that needed badly to be repeated.

  A woman saw the sunshine coming in a window looking through a memory to find a person to form a shadow.

  He did not like memories or old persons he said, he did not like a habit which is brown in a cup and a cigarette turning to smoke.


  He did not like the sun to repeat him on the wall or the woman to repeat him by name.

  The sun annoys the woman that it should search the room everyday lighting the wall where he had cursed his shadow. The sun comes everyday because it has become used to coming through a window where it rests safely in its golden gloom. The vain sunlight lying on the floor sunning itself, a yellow kitten made of dust.

  He had not liked old persons who had become more memory than flesh sitting in the sun like peopleless shadows.

  It

  It was someone as viewed in a mirror, or was it you said it was someone viewing its someone who it is in a mirror where perhaps someone lives only.

  Someone is not the chair but part of where, where a table and a blue in square is a window and some sky.

  Nor is the chair someone with someone on its lap.

  Someone becomes embarrassed sitting on a chair’s lap. Who is person who allows person this intimacy. It is none but man’s form. Is not sir said son of a mother to himself the son of his mother. Did not the chair make me to warm itself like I am a blanket for a chair.

  The mirror is willing to allow anything to be — Creates to-be again.

  Time is passing.

  Time has passed.

  And then time is passing.

  Passed, it begins to pass again.

  The Man Rock

  A man is a rock in a garden of chairs and waits for a longtime to be over.

  It is easier for a rock in a garden than a man inside his mother. He decided to be a rock when he got outside.

  A rock asks only what is a rock.

  A rock waits to be a rock.

  A rock is a longtime waiting for a longtime to be over so that it may turn and go the other way.

  A rock awakens into a man. A man looks. A man sleeps back into a rock as it is better for a rock in a garden than a man inside himself trembling in red darkness.

  Mr Is

  Mr Is’ head was made of wood. He had become like a man with a wooden leg. His head was now auxiliary.

  One day he noticed this as he was trying to think of mother. One day he was trying to think of mother and he noticed that his head had become wood. He tried to think of mother but his head had became quite wooden.

  He put hats on his head. He put a homburg on the head. He put a peaked cap on it. He put Aunt Mill’s lace doily on it.

  He could not think anymore.

  He said, I am done with thought.

  He thought, I have no thoughts.

  Unlovely bushes of hair grew out of the head which he kept cropped like the hedge around mother’s house.

  Mr Is went into the woods to think about his wooden head.

  In the woods is where you think good because it is getting close to nature and therefore you can think better.

  Mr Brain

  Mr Brain was a hermit dwarf who liked to eat shellfish off the moon. He liked to go into a tree then because there is a little height to see a little further, which may reveal now the stone, a pebble — it is a twig, it is nothing under the moon that you can make sure of.

  So Mr Brain opened his mouth to let a moonbeam into his head.

  Why to be alone, and you invite the stars to tea. A cup of tea drinks a luminous guest.

  In the winter could you sit quietly by the window, in the evening when you could have vinegar and pretend it to be wine, because you would do well to eat doughnuts and pretend you drink wine as you sit quietly by the window. You may kick your leg back and forth. You may have a tendency to not want to look there too long and turn to find darkness in the room because it had become nighttime.

  Why to be alone. You are pretty are you not/you are as pretty as you are not, or does that make sense.

  You are not pretty, that is how you can be alone. And then you are pretty like fungus and alga, you are no one without some one, in theory alone.

  Be good enough to go to bed so you can not think too much longer.

  A Man With a Tree on His Head

  A man had been married to a woman’s high-heeled shoe for seven years.

  He did not like to be spoken to because it confused the hair on his head which had a tendency to become grass when ever it tended that way, which it was anyway, which he hid under wild flowers he let grow in his part, hiding those under bushes growing from the back of his head, topped finally by a cherrytree from which he ate as opposed to starving to death.

  He would wrap his wife in newspaper whenever he did so.

  If he heard a street noise he heard a street noise.

  If he heard a cow moo he heard a cow moo and that settled it, it was not a dog barking. Or was it. Or a dog learned to speak cow. Or a cow pretending to be a dog speaking cow — And something very much to think about.

  A cloud was once in the sky as he remembers and he looked up at it, or was it a cow barking.

  The shoe asked him to leave the house and he did so and snuck back through a window and watched the shoe going to the bathroom.

  Mrs Reach Reached Into the Air

  I cannot reach higher than there, she roared. That is quite high, said Mr Reach, high enough to hang clothes on a washline, to put cupboards in shape by arranging the crocks and box. But can it be high enough to be high enough, she screamed. It can be high enough to be low enough if you’ll stoop to clean floors, said Mr Reach. Is that where they are, she screamed. You’re standing on one, he said. But I’m trying to do upwards, to get going, to reach into the reachiest reach, she roared. Stop doing such as you do because I get nervous when you do such and such, he said. I can do it too many times if so to choose I choose to do it, she screamed. Stop stop before you cannot do it more, because it is better to be able to do it more than to do it more and not be able to do it anymore, he said. But my arms have got long like I could be an ape if so I wanted, and so I want to be an ape, she screamed. You will go to a zoo ladyloo because your mind is full of monkey fur, he said. It is not it is full of goods, to be opened posthumously, she roared. Stop stop, he said, the floor has a dirt on it, your arms must come out of heaven — Oh please let them come out of heaven so I may slap their hands. I am shaking hands with several angels and it tickles like don’t tickle me or I’ll scream, she screamed. Oh it is getting to very not nice, he said.

  And so Mrs Reach reached into the air.

  The Lover

  The lover has four legs and it loves itself the hairy pits of its arms and legs.

  The lover has four arms and sleeps all tangled in its persons, all hands on skin and up backside through hair up belly a handful of breast the neck is sweet and the ear is kissed and the eye is kissed and the mouth licked.

  And then sick of it all and a bird sings and the wallpaper hums with the monotony of a flower who is monotonous all over the walls.

  The lover is two having coffee midsummer by a window, nude white ones in afternoon light full of twigs, a tree by the window.

  Dream Man

  Dream man said he will do dreams. He has a box and a clock. He has a clock to wind when it is Wednesday.

  An apple is very cherry bigger, it is very something the same.

  And dream man said he will do dreams, he will do boxes — Now can you hide there, yes you can. And the clock which can go tick.

  If somebody who loves you does not love you and there is very nothing to do like you will wind on Wednesday or apple as a cherry is as is an apple as a cherry.

  Can you hide, I think so. Can you think so, I think so. In a box to hide. Can you do a box like you can a dream if somebody who loves you does not love you.

  You can do a dream like she loves you.

  Dream man will dream he is not dreaming and dream himself awake and wind his clock which makes it Wednesday and he has a box.

  A Person

  A person lived with a window and wall, tea pot and cup, table and chair.