Strategy

And then all of them heard the voice;

It’s enough to speak about words

speak with words

That’s it

That’s enough

That’ll do

And then (when?) all of them (who?) (did what?)

felt a doubt about what they heard

Only conjunctions

interjections

and particles have been left out of question

All others that answered the question unsatisfactorily

agreed:	to go, to slip away, to take cover in the mouth of the source
	like a snail
	and to grow deaf to please (whom?)
	from the ringing in the ears from the hooter of double o
	to angle on thread for the paper auricles of the fool and the monster
	the oyster of hearing will wither weary
	by the lips of the secluded ear, by the doom of the ear-ring
	and the Accountant of doleful sounds
	will fall asleep, slip away by stealth and the rosy luster of fever
	with the scorched frill on the faces …
	we shall not listen we shall not hear
	That’s enough
	That’ll do
	That’s it

And then the sea was split, like the big shell

seducing by its blackness like Nescafé

and spliced the edges again. It was not painful to sink.

The siren wailed for them shabbes.

But then they went out on the shore with Blacksea-usher

and drove the wave on the shore the way one drives a puck on a field,

the way one drives a pack of sheep on a pasture in the mountains,

so they drove the coastal lambs like the Tartar-Mongolian yoke,

like the enemy, with clubs in front of them.

And then they returned to the place where they tortured the clay

and crushed the wine of the jug so that ten drops be spilled

on the open spelling-book, on its pages, to wipe off the wet hand-written lines

as a wanderer wipes off sweat.

Let the Man of letters weep for them

and the spellbound Accountant be puzzled.

(This is the image of Bewilderment—harboring itself

and greedily turning pink, its swirling out the curve of flesh

and knitting ligature of the notched edges

with the pitiful gilt)

And then to see it they glided into the depth

and feeling their way found the image of the gilded warm-colored rose

but then it seemed the rosy worm of guilt or perhaps

the golden folds closed and the sea fell and shut itself.

And then they raised the pyramid of silt above themselves;

there in the overturned hut of heaven in the Delta of the source of the Nile

there was a human hair, discovered after many thousand years,

and then all of them heard the voice:

It’s enough to speak about words

speak with words

And now—are you still here?

On the shore Katiusha appears:

I do not want to lie in a shrine

I want to lie in brine.

Translated by the author and edited by Ashraf Noor