Glenna's Blog

I saw the teeming sea; I saw daybreak and nightfall; I saw the multitudes of America; I saw a silvery cobweb in the center of a black pyramid; I saw a splintered labyrinth (it was London); I saw, close up, unending eyes watching themselves in me as in a mirror; I saw all the mirrors on earth and none of them reflected me; I saw in a backyard of Soler Street the same tiles that thirty years before I’d seen in the entrance of a house in Fray Bentos; I saw bunches of grapes, snow, tobacco, lodes of metal, steam; I saw convex equatorial deserts and each one of their grains of sand; I saw a woman in Inverness whom I shall never forget; I saw her tangled hair, her tall figure, I saw the cancer in her breast; I saw a ring of baked mud in a sidewalk, where before there had been a tree; I saw a summer house in Adrogué and a copy of the first English translation of Pliny — Philemon Holland’s — and all at the same time saw each letter on each page (as a boy, I used to marvel that the letters in a closed book did not get scrambled and lost overnight); I saw a sunset in Querétaro that seemed to reflect the colour of a rose in Bengal; I saw my empty bedroom; I saw in a closet in Alkmaar a terrestrial globe between two mirrors that multiplied it endlessly; I saw horses with flowing manes on a shore of the Caspian Sea at dawn; I saw the delicate bone structure of a hand; I saw the survivors of a battle sending out picture postcards; I saw in a showcase in Mirzapur a pack of Spanish playing cards; I saw the slanting shadows of ferns on a greenhouse floor; I saw tigers, pistons, bison, tides, and armies; I saw all the ants on the planet; I saw a Persian astrolabe; I saw in the drawer of a writing table (and the handwriting made me tremble) unbelievable, obscene, detailed letters, which Beatriz had written to Carlos Argentino; I saw a monument I worshipped in the Chacarita cemetery; I saw the rotted dust and bones that had once deliciously been Beatriz Viterbo; I saw the circulation of my own dark blood; I saw the coupling of love and the modification of death; I saw the Aleph from every point and angle, and in the Aleph I saw the earth and in the earth the Aleph and in the Aleph the earth; I saw my own face and my own bowels; I saw your face; and I felt dizzy and wept, for my eyes had seen that secret and conjectured object whose name is common to all men but which no man has looked upon — the unimaginable universe.

[That sentence is about looking at the aleph, which contains the universe. First thing of the semester my Introduction to Poetry Writing professor made us write our own semicolonic sentences about looking at Chapel Hill, which contained our universe. Seven years later I still think about the Aleph assignment, but I never redo it, because writing about the unimaginable universe makes me feel like a tool.]

If you set out in this world,
 better be born seven times.
 Once, in a house on fire,
 once, in a freezing flood,
 once, in a wild madhouse,
 once, in a field of ripe wheat,
 once, in an empty cloister,
 and once among pigs in sty.
 Six babes crying, not enough:
 you yourself must be the seventh.

When you must fight to survive,
 let your enemy see seven.
 One, away from work on Sunday,
 one, starting his work on Monday,
 one, who teaches without payment,
 one, who learned to swim by drowning,
 one, who is the seed of a forest,
 and one, whom wild forefathers protect,
 but all their tricks are not enough:
 you yourself must be the seventh.

[The rest...]

(Seriously read this, it’s funny, like a non-jackass version of Judith Butler.)

Unfunny uncles who insist
in trying on a lady’s hat,
—oh, even if the joke falls flat,
we share your slight transvestite twist

in spite of our embarrassment.
Costume and custom are complex.
The headgear of the other sex
inspires us to experiment.

Anandrous aunts, who, at the beach
with paper plates upon your laps,
keep putting on the yachtsmen’s caps
with exhibitionistic screech,

the visors hanging o’er the ear
so that the golden anchors drag,
—the tides of fashion never lag.
Such caps may not be worn next year.

Or you who don the paper plate
itself, and put some grapes upon it,
or sport the Indian’s feather bonnet,
—perversities may aggravate

the natural madness of the hatter.
And if the opera hats collapse
and crowns grow draughty, then, perhaps,
he thinks what might a miter matter?

Unfunny uncle, you who wore a
hat too big, or one too many,
tell us, can’t you, are there any
stars inside your black fedora?

Aunt exemplary and slim,
with avernal eyes, we wonder
what slow changes they see under
their vast, shady, turned-down brim.

The camera pans a gorgeous snow-filled landscape: rolling hills, large black trees, a frozen river. The snow falls and falls. The camera stops to find Tennyson, in an armchair, in the middle of a snowy field.

Tennyson:

It’s snowing. The snow is like… the snow is like crushed aspirin, like bits of paper… no, it’s like gauze bandages, clean teeth, shoelaces, headlights…no,
I’m getting too old for this, it’s like a huge T-shirt that’s been chewed on by a dog,
it’s like semen, confetti, chalk, seashells, woodsmoke, ash, soap, trillium, solitude, daydreaming… Oh hell,
you can see for yourself! That’s what I hate about film!

He dies.