It is scribbled along the body
Impossible even to say a word
An alphabet has been stored beneath the ground
It is a practice alphabet, work of the hand
Yet not, not marks inside a box
For example, this is a mirror box
Spinoza designed such a box
and called it the Eighth Sky
called it the Nevercadabra House
as a joke
Yet not, not so much a joke
not Notes for Electronic Harp
on a day free of sounds
(but I meant to write "clouds")
At night these same boulevards fill with snow
Lancers and dancers pass a poisoned syringe,
as you wrote, writing of death in the snow,
Patroclus and a Pharaoh on Rue Ravignan
It is scribbled across each body
Impossible even to name a word
Look, you would say, how the sky falls
at first gently, then not at all
Two chemicals within the firefly are the cause
Twin ships, twin nemeses
preparing to metamorphose
into an alphabet in stone
St.-Benoît-sur-Loire
to Max Jacob