To the Wren: Collected & New Poems

A TRUCK MARKED FLAMMABLE

—for Edith Morgan Whitaker

Special thanks to Aspen Rose Ahmad.—

A TRUCK MARKED FLAMMABLE

(From inside the dumpster, outside the bughouse)

HEADNOTES

1 Euclid assumed the truth of five postulates, upon which he built his system of geometry. The fifth of these postulates was troublesome, both to Euclid and to subsequent mathematicians and, since he could not prove it, he avoided using it as much as possible. By 1763 twenty-eight faulty proofs of the fifth postulate had been published. In 1823, Non-Euclidean geometry was discovered by twenty-one-year-old János Bolyai, and, simultaneously, by Nokolay Lobachevskiy. It was based, not on a proof of the fifth postulate, but on a denial of it, and a following out of the consequences of that denial. In the following letter, Farkas Bolyai, father to János, describes the frustrations of his own lifelong attempts at trying, unsuccessfully, to prove Euclid’s fifth postulate. (See Douglas R. Hofstadter, Gödel, Escher, Bach (New York: Vintage Books, 1979), pp. 88-99.)

2 Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986), p. 42.

3 In their Principia Mathematica, Bertrand Russell and Alfred North Whitehead set out to rid logic, set theory, and number theory from paradoxes. In order to do this they had to eliminate self-reference between terms within any given system. They created closed systems which relied on extremely formal and artificial definitions in order to rid these systems of paradoxes. For example, they rid set theory of its paradoxes by disallowing the formation of certain kinds of sets. In 1931 Gödel published a paper in which he showed that no axiomatic system could be proven consistent without the imposition of such artificial rules. (See Hofstadter, pp. 18-24.)

You must not attempt this approach to parallels. I know this way to its very end. I have traversed this bottomless night, which extinguished all light and joy of my life. I entreat you, leave the science of parallels alone … I thought I would sacrifice myself for the sake of the truth. I was ready to become a martyr who would remove the flaw from geometry and return it purified to mankind. I accomplished monstrous, enormous labors; my creations are far better than those of others and yet I have not achieved complete satisfaction. For here it is true that si paullum a summo discessit, vergit adimum.*

I turned back unconsoled, pitying myself and all mankind … I have traveled past all reefs of this infernal Dead Sea and have always come back with broken mast and torn sail. The ruin of my disposition and my fall date back to this time. I thoughtlessly risked my life and happiness—aut Caesar aut nihil.**¹

*If he comes down a bit from the heights, he swerves towards the bottom.

**Either Caesar or Nothing.

I

The nurses make my name

into a song

because they like to hear

their own voices singing.

MAArio … MAAArio,

MAAArio GallUUUCHio.

And when I hear them I hug my knees

more tightly to my chest—

my butt pulls me deeper

into the soggy layers

where it’s quiet. Everything shifts

slightly; the flies all jump

into the air where they will wait

for me to resettle.

Then I close my eyes

and the color is the same

dark gray as these walls.

I squeeze my eyes. I make the colors

of orange peels and banana skins.

They see a forest green

dumpster. When they walk past

their song rises

and falls through the air—

but my absence holds

its place against them:

a pocket of air, resting

in the dead branches

of the tree across the lot,

my absence never shifts, no matter

what the wind says.

Usually I’m in the rec room

when that clumsy truck

bitches its way up the drive.

I go to the window and watch it

lift my box and dump

everything into itself—

the place I hollowed out,

the walls and floor I made

just so. Everything but a few

useless globs that stick

or snail down the steel walls.

Then it’s two days before

I have enough to work with,

three before it’s right

in here again.

One day in April, while the snow

was being changed into mud

and the grass lured back into life,

I spent my morning hours sorting

plastic forks and knives,

gallon milk jugs, and juice tins

with bright pictures of ripe oranges

peeling from their sides

from the paper plates and cups

that I crushed into a leaf-like nest.

I curled up, let the warm smell

cover me and slept.

The truck’s beeping and whining

woke me—just in time. I climbed out

the back door, without peeking first—

but nobody saw me.

Some days, I am a lucky man.

II

Today I told the doctor

I wanted to be

a girl eating salad, just

a girl eating salad—

idly looking out a window,

idly watching the traffic,

watching the traffic

without a thought—

eating salad.

If he understood me

he did not say.

He did say,

however (as they say)

you are, however, not.

III

Till I was four

my parents kept me in the rabbit hutch

at the far end of the lawn on Sunday

afternoons for safekeeping.

I read this in a report on me.

But what I remember is the way

I graphed my world as it moved

beyond the wire’s sturdy grid

without knowing, without needing

to know, the name for what I did.

I remember my mother’s head

at the kitchen window, swaying

in a gentle arc as she ironed,

my father pacing out the X-axis

with his big boots, running his head

along the fifth grid, and back

and out of sight where the lawnmower

still sputtered. And I remember

how those soft-bodied rabbits

whom I loved, loved me.

And, one day in particular,

how we watched the bright leaves falling,

as they must have fallen often.

In time I might have learned something

more about what passes between

the wind and a leaf

when the leaf is falling.

With a stopwatch and a ruler

on the grid, I could have learned,

by the time I was seven

to figure the speed of one leaf

falling on one calm Sunday

and known then something

of the order in an instant.

But when I was four, a man

with a heavy holster and stiff pants

got out of a blue and white car

and waved his papers at my father’s face.

And then, my father pulled me out

of that straw bed and bought

a padlock to keep me out and I

had to touch my rabbits

from the other side

of the wire’s sturdy grid.

Within a week they lost interest

in me, and there was nothing I could do

to coax their little squares of fur,

their mobile noses, to the front of the hutch.

I began to wander

the complicated lawn.

So, I grew up somewhere

between points east and west

in the generation of the professional

backrub, in a town marked

gas only, in a two story white house

near highway 80, never dreaming

that the numbers would not step in

and show the way in which all things

explain themselves in relation

to each other, thinking only

that if I worked and worked

and worked them they’d help me

understand the traffic on the highway,

the slant of the roof, the hardened

white drip on the paint can.

By the time I was ten I’d begun

ordering my days around the joy

of every proof I could coax out

of the postulates, but when I was

fourteen the postulates collapsed

and fell like questions at my feet

and I began the lonely work of proving

the given, as if the world depended

on me for its existence. But sometimes,

buoyed up towards my dreamful sleep,

I sensed the shy presence

of some lamenting God—

just on the verge of speaking.

IV

But even Euclid couldn’t prove

his faulty fifth; it was

the prayer he built his dreams on

and on his dreams they built

the Golden Gate, which hovers

over the silver bay—God’s

answer to the doubtful.

Mario, I told myself, you

must learn to see

God’s voice; you must learn

to pray, and he will answer.

V

So, I prayed

at the university. I used formulas

that worked like machines

greased to a point past friction,

making jumbles of numbers

fall evenly into place.

Sometimes I worked at my desk

through the night with nothing

to disturb me but the sound

of the night watchman

who’d jingle slowly up the hall,

like a dog with too many tags

to surprise a cat, turn his key

at a quarter past each hour

and jingle slowly away

with his steady steps and his gun—

reminding me that I should have been

home hours ago, pulling chicken

from the cracks between my teeth.

Stepping out in the morning

after those nights

it was always as if it had just

rained, as if it were spring

and a subway token an unusually

bright and dispensable thing.

I welled up right smack

to behind my eyes and

had to lower my lashes

on the platform. The world was

that close and I was

that close to it—I wanted not

to come out through my eyes

in such a dim unruly place.

Do you know what it means

when all the numbers take their places

and insist upon their innocence

amid the chaotic babble about paradoxes?

When the pourers of concrete

defy the smashers of theory

(when a building scrapes the sky,

when a bridge casts its shadow

on water, when stars and satellites

mix in the heavens, one and the same

to the human eye) it is the numbers,

telling of an invisible shape—an order

so huge and flawless it cannot be seen

clearly in the mind, which it visits

sometimes, in flashes. It is the shadow,

in concrete, of a perfection

no mind can hold.

And if you laugh at me I will count

slowly from one to ten

on the fingers God gave me,

ploddingly, on the fingers

which used to flower geometrically

towards Eden, and remind you—

those formulas work.

Witness the Golden Gate:

good enough for jumping from,

good enough for driving on—

only a fool would rather swim,

choose to scoff a fact

because his mind can’t prove it.

The building in the sky. The bridge

on the water. The light

in the heavens. I was so happy

loving my formulas—

but only in flashes.

***

The dome of heaven rests on the quarters of the earth, sometimes supported by four caryatidal kings, dwarfs, giants, elephants or turtles. Hence, the traditional importance of the mathematical problem of the quadrature of the circle: it contains the secret of the transformation of heavenly into earthly forms.²

***

VI

And in those flashes

I saw all

that I could not see

with my flawed reason

and I saw

that my reason was flawed,

and shouted

damn Russell, damn Whitehead, logic

is of a human mind, while the numbers,

the numbers are divine

I will sing my two shoes, my feet,

my socks that match, my two legs—

one for each leg of my pants—

I will sing the shape of my calculator

and the lopsided circle of the moon.

My absence will hold its place against you.³

VII

Most of you have something

in common with the nurses:

it gives you your knack

for seeing things and leaving

them at that. It makes

everything possible:

the long subway tunnels buried

in the earth, the life of rising

each morning and taking yourself

to work. It stands between

the platform and the platform’s

stunning wonder and makes

all things which cross your vision

bearable. In it you see

a perfect blueprint of the world

which shields you from the world’s

perfection. It has no name I know of,

for it’s all you can see

if you don’t know it’s there,

but, like a huge mirror,

it reflects all things straight

back to you clearly,

save your own image

which it frees to wander.

Yes. A mirror. That’s it.

And like a thought or a mind

it could break when you

least expect it.

VIII

I thought the numbers

would explain the true

workings of God’s shadow

on the earth—but I

cannot explain them

and still I sensed Him

somewhere, moving beyond

the clear limits

of my perception.

IX

After I left the university

in New York, I hired out

to drive a truck marked

flammable all the way

to San Francisco.

In a truckstop.

In Pittsburgh.

In my little room.

I don’t know how it happened,

but I sat on the bed and watched

the slow motion cracking

of that safe blueprint—

my mirror vision of a room:

the web of light creeping

over the table, spreading

past the bathroom door,

‘till the whole room starred

and shattered into brightness.

I watched, shocked, as if

I’d sped up a bank into

a wide unyielding tree, as if

it had nothing to do with me—

that ending.

X

I have cursed God

for showing me all

that I cannot see,

for flaunting Himself

through the great machine

of the world, while I

with my flawed understanding

have the power he denied

all other creatures

to recognize my flaw.

And he has,

in turn, cursed me

with a vision

that blinds my eyes.

And now I will fly.

XI

I left the truckstop and drove

that tanker through the narrow streets

of Pittsburgh where a skinny kid

with a scab on his nose

ran after a bus and, falling,

showed no signs on his face

(elsewhere and slightly sad)

that he had fallen, but just

rose up running, token in hand,

through the fumes.

Then a pockmarked kid,

no more than seventeen,

wobbled by on a