CHRONOS
- an oration -
1. Devilish disposition
You eat, gobble, nibble, swallow
always hungry, forever staring
in distress. Your absolute is incomprehensible.
Here I am on a revolving ball
proud, lustful for power and riches
and I try, not without effort, to comprehend you.
I concoct stories, myths, histories
to express you. I name you, I invoke you
I paint you, I personify and embody you
and, I admit, all I've done till now
is plead with you:
rowing in water, air, ether, soil
learning your tongue
following your path.
A path, yet again
I divide you, I cleave, I split you up
I shorten you, I cut, I geld, I carve you
I deceive myself - I hold you in my hands!
I place you in books
I remember you
I pass on
your memory
from one to another
I create a tradition, a betrayal,
signs, all kinds of forms,
so that you may tell me
something, so that it's not
nothing, yet
I do not have you.
2. Envy, my Saturn
You pervade everything, everywhere
both dead and living
wretchedly, venomously
you enter my dreams
wherever, whenever
and in spite of everything
I beg to see you.
Wondrous devil.
Obsession!
Obsession of mine, time:
I'm getting used to you
I'm getting used to myself
and I too
begin, like a ruler
to think myself all-powerful.
To delude myself.
Around me, maps, divinities, horoscopes,
pictures, books, memoirs,
calculation, mathematics, chronometries.
You become the starting point so that everything
can be composed together
you are a devilish disposition
a structure of structures
Time, Literature
Show me the dark side
the excess, the boundlessness
the chronical invisibility
our mutual envy.
Envy, my Saturn,
wrongly understood. Misunderstanding
is the beginning of the Drama.
3. Time. Man.
Drama, Saturn:
I become a leading character, an opponent.
You, a primal force, an urge for totality;
I straddle from here to there.
You circle cyclical, ringlike.
I mock the repetitions.
You repeat, rarely but with order,
demonically, syn-chronised, total.
I wipe out, I chase epochs, do you hear me,
epochs. If I could I would fly away.
You watch from high above
you write and fly.
Somewhere we approach each other:
You eat your own children
I eat them.
Doesn't that tell you something?
Either you are in me
or I am in You!
All begins anew:
It begins anew
always
time, man
time in man, a fleeting
Devilish world.
Translated by Ilija Casule and Thomas Shapcott
