CAROLI LINNÆI — SYSTEMA NATURÆ Per REGNA TRIA NATURÆ, Secundum CLASSES, ORDINES, GENERA, SPECIES, Cum CHARACTERIBUS, DIFFERENTIIS, SYNONYMIS, LOCIS. Regnum: Animale, Vegetabile, Lapideum. Classis: Mammalia / Quadrupedia, Aves, Amphibia, Pisces, Insecta, Vermes. Ordo: Primates / Antropomorpha, Bruta, Feræ, Bestiæ, Glires, Pecora, Belluæ, Cete. Generum: Homo, Simia, Lemur, Vespertilio. Varietas:° Europæus albus, Americanus rubescens, Asiaticus fuscus, Africanus niger [Ferus, Monstrosus].
Nosce te ipsum:
Skin colour first yellowish, not yellow, then sallow.
Temperament melancholic, irrigated by black bile.
Posture stiff.
Behaviour grave, haughty, greedy.
° Subsequent translations render Linnæus’s ‘varieties’ as ‘sub-species’. #
#(Translation is a violence.)
[15. Dire critical]
All in the tone.
Give us each day our diacritics — our low and high, fall and rise, our horns and holds:
Flat we are without.
(You like that, no doubt.)
Give us our dấu sắc, huyền, ngã, hỏi, nặng:
For ours is not your flat euphony
Your squeezed, frictioned speech
But full mouth music:
Tripping of water over stone-carved lingas
Rising tang of early season mango in the mouth
Trill of moonlight and wind on silk curtains
or reflected sunlight, prismatic, on rice paddies
along the Baie d’Along
Coloratura descant of US bombs
Scintillae of mother’s ivory comb as it falls
in the ivory mirror
as if through water
as if through silk
through your long black hair.
*
Má (high rising) is mother; is also cheek, as in slack of flesh
made gaunt, sallow from malnutrition, as in from agent orange,
from yellow rain, from grief, as in to which
I turn my face. As in turn the other.
Now grave your voice: mà falls to but, fell conjunction
breaking what it binds — negating — making negative —
glyph fallen away now as ma becomes ghost, as in hungry,
as in of your unborn child — my unborn sister —
by defoliants consumed — body burden negating body
burden — in your corrupted womb.
And devil too, as in turn that famous photo
of Hồ Chí Minh’s face upside down to see: a cipher,
see, as signed by the tilde in mã. As in we are,
all of us, hooked, gaffed, dipped long and held down
into the always end — mả — tomb.
To me, though, in the south that is my name, mother is mẹ.
The dot below signifying nặng, as in heavy.
The voice, beginning at creak, at bottom, staying down,
at the edge, or mé, of low stridor: it is my son’s wheeze
(my son, whom I named peace)
after ingesting sesame, mè, which makes him hard to breathe,
and his tongue revolts. His skin revolts. It blisters into welts.
To say mẹ is to speak with a smile while from above
smiling white devils splash you with dioxin, with napalm,
setting the palms on pretty fire —
and you see your own mother’s lifelong poise
crack — mẻ — like lacquer on a burning mask,
you feel her seed of a daughter going hot inside you
and you feel her whole body foreign, future-tensed,
gathered to its fast, heavy, unhatched dot.
[16. Violence: Autologous]
(or close enough)
According to Mishima (per Hass, per Scott Stokes)
sincerity dwells in our entrails
seppuku the cutting open of our bellies
is merely a physical demonstration of it.
[24. Violence: Translative]
F/or You are a Poet-Translator
A Colossus bestride the narrow etc.
O’erseeing commerce & small intercourse.
You are the Keeper of the great keep
Manning many great Gates —
Of Meridian, phoenix-turreted; of golden Mercy —
Nothing is closed to You.
You are not the Middle- but Over-Man,
With apex intent.
Borders to You mere form.
You are a Cosmopolis, the centrality.
You trade in gratitude.
So You don’t know Vietnamese.
Did Pound know Chinese? Did Rexroth? Snyder?
Fenollosa? (Do I either? Ha ha!)
One has nothing to do with the other!
The unlike must be forced together.
Per Heraclitus:
‘All things take place by strife.’
East-West, man-wife, yin-yang —
All that.
So take it all / whatever.
Make Your status out of their
Sincerity.
It is raw but enriched.
Fuse their characters — or split them —
They are but detrital figures
Fuguing across a burning lake
That You set alight
Under a moon You make:
Their Word in the strife of Your Will
Brittling, obliterating into bụi đời —
Dust of life —
Leaving who but You to pick them up
And let them in?
In, orphaned fragments,
Into the lingua franca — into
Safety. The comfort of hierarchy.
Currency.
