ekleksographia

1

A donkey goes by with a little cart up against his ass, there's not much noise because of the rubbered wheels and that real light trotting step. Soon you'll find the cart propped up at some corner of the sidewalk: with his hand in a ragged glove, somebody's working on five or six prickly pears for a customer to eat right there on the street. Knack of doing it fast with a short, strong knife: giving him the completely uncapped fruit like an intimate gesture, too intimate. Pear-peels under the cart. The donkey waits in the little bit of shade given by a wall. An odd mix of micro-economy, of playful contentment between the vendor and his customer, and me already thinking about a poem, here I am

With a book like a small cart, I really hate

To think of how the publisher's going to try and sell this stuff: pleasing the reader (any reader) isn't easy. And waiting in that silence?

I'm sure some day I'll start braying.

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What do you know, there's another one waiting, loosely hitched to his little metal cart. Friendly and on your guard, you walk up to pet him.

The surrounding world has the lightness of new buildings around a big vacant lot; bikes wheel it calmly through the sunlight. What's that donkey doing there?

You know his job isn't much of anything. But it's endless (even though long moments of immobility are part of it: waiting to start going again).

You almost start thinking a donkey's kind of useless: then you realize you could say that about everybody. Everyone waits so often without knowing what for. Every morning we start all over again, too.

And it's not so easy to act like an ass:

Not knowing if other people love us or don't trust us is hard to take.

Waiting’s a real pain. Going on isn’t much fun either.

Yes, maybe the world's like a new soccer-ball in a vacant lot full of tough grass: you'd rather think you're no jackass.

Maybe because you just didn't get it:

It's not easy to understand a donkey.

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3

I'm looking at a donkey, so what do you want to see, huh?

Its ear moved it's not
            To wave at you, could be
            Because of the flies, who knows?

His ear or all of a sudden a sort of stiffness comes over him
            His hard rubber member, there it is
            Gone just as fast, does the donkey think,
            I really wonder. And you waiting there. I didn't see a thing.

The big ear and calm eye of a donkey, as if
            A lot of silence for writing, probably the words
            Didn't move an inch.

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4

One day there won't be any donkeys left, for sure. The last one I really knew back home (every morning we used to go get green fodder—buckwheat field nearby, after the first bushes, cart just a couple of boards laid over a low axle-tree) I liked his gentle eyes, body of a happy donkey showing it all, often.

And in fact when it's all over with the donkeys we're going to miss something, that particular way of being most delicate and most grotesque at the same time:

A lot of silence gathered into the eyes then suddenly space taking the shape of a badly played trumpet sounding out what's missing in the pretentious harmony of the world.

In the end we won't know anything anymore. From time to time I touch my belly, my dumb beast. I have the feeling it's important to write like an ass, too.

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5

Hell, the donkey doesn't give a damn
            If life's a bitch or a ball. The world is only quiet blue.

Waiting or assaulting time
            Looks as if it adds up to the same thing:
            What's in his gentle eye
            Or his stiff member.
            Adds up to nothing at all.

Life's a bunched-up rag
            That's not going to wipe a thing. The donkey can show it all,
            He doesn't give a damn.