II
The seeing wears away the seer: twelve years further on Voyager 2 putts out through the pinball solar system, past Neptune and beyond the reach of time. Another day in the round and the cliche of uneventful incident has not yet arrived. The balloon that is so majestic on the plump air tumbles as heavy as a plumb-bob onto the countryside, trailing its fifty seconds of life huddled to impact. The cattle scattered, the sky did not change but released names into the wispy afternoon. Then all is as it was before the tragic flight, except the calm that betokens fear. And clouds rich as coalmines gathered from the chutes of mountainsides, over the belts of grainfield to boost the corporate climates, and to market each end of the world gyrally.
A blotting paper sky, the soft tear of thunder, then lightning. Who would demand of the wise a word to steer by? Nostradamus throws his hands in the air after the event: Mark well my words, I told you so. Backward we look upon his bag of tricks, and with each new calamity a surreal rabbit lifts before your eyes. Ribbed streets! Pneumatic heartbeat! Prophecy is the Art of Boredom for one who cannot stand his own company from one moment to the next. He pulls the hat trick, feigns the future, argues the task of his breath wearily on its way. Some ravel dreams to cats cradles in whose uninhabited solitude, slowly as a yawn, wish to pull forth the superstrings. Call it a living, this space between meetings. Those encirclements that bind us together temporally.
The distant applause of rain and the weekend screaming of a girl. The screech of a trains brake as if a fire were being extinguished. The exiles brain is a frozen, grey sea-storm; from wave to wave he stares down the barrel of the moon. It is morning and the sun spreads over Nicaragua slow as the slitting of a throat. Consider Ernesto Cardinal as he rises from his bed, how he stacks his images practical as planks. Ay, the roses blood dark as diesel!