Read Wheel With a Single Spoke for Free Online Page B

thinking of me.
    He forgot.
    VI.
    I am only my name.
    The rest is “you,” I told him.
    He didn’t hear me, for his
    mind was elsewhere.
    Why else would he have said:
    You wrestled the word itself
    and won!
    Was he the word itself?
    Is name word?
    . . . He who is only “you,”
    you and you and you and you,
    who surrounds my name?

The Battle Against Five Antiterrestrial Elements
    I.
    The general came to me and said:
    â€“ You are the only one left who can do anything;
    it’s all up to you, whether we
    will stay like this, or not.
    . . . Soldiers were
    all along the roads. And
    a great, quiet rabble.
    Not one was at ease.
    Not one was at attention or ready
    for attack, yet.
    II.
    What should I do? How? When? Where?
    He pushed me slowly, between my shoulder blades,
    into the field outside,
    beside a withered maple sapling.
    Here it was quiet,
    and over the freshly ploughed terrain
    suddenly,
    from under the wide clouds at the other end,
    came hurled at me
    an apple.
    III.
    I wanted to dive and catch the apple
    like a ball.
    It would have been a mistake, –
    they told me afterwards, the angels,
    it would have been a mistake,
    they told me afterwards
    friends, family, military officers.
    IV.
    I ran to the apple,
    and peeled its ring
    like it was Saturn,
    I ran to the apple
    and peeled its
    red band like it was
    an old packet of good quality cigarettes.
    V.
    The apple broke in two, the worm
    ran through my fingers into the earth;
    it left by way of those furrows,
    and beside the withered maple at my end
    I grinned
    like a drunk at the door of a bowling alley.
    VI.
    The general took me to the middle of the
    restless soldiers,
    along those narrow streets where they
    were neither at attention nor at ease.
    He took me there to be seen, he took me there
    to calm them,
    under dark clouds hanging
    over the city with narrow streets and soldiers,
    those strange soldiers, clean,
    smelling of lavender,
    neither quiet nor
    unquiet,
    with wide, glistening eyes,
    resting their hands on their weapons;
    at whom, they did not know
    or in which direction
    to open – fire.
    VII.
    I have only one more element
    for you to defeat, the last one,
    then we can escape and be, –
    another way, we will be – but in another way . . .
    said the general to me.
    VIII.
    Two, three, and four.
    The second, third, and fourth battle
    I cannot remember any more.
    The general assured me that they
    had nothing to do, at all, with words,
    and thus nothing to do with either things
    or our civilization.
    The general assured me
    that I had won the two,
    three, four,
    the second, third, fourth battle,
    but as winner I had lost the right
    to learn anything about the victims
    or the battleground,
    by rote or by heart,
    under clouds or inside nerves.
    The general gave as proof the fact that I am,
    that he is,
    that we are,
    that they are,
    that the city still existed, as we knew it.
    The general told me that we
    cannot praise ourselves with victory
    of the second,
    third, fourth,
    because they have nothing to do with the domain
    of communication,
    the domain of comprehension,
    OMPREHENSION . . .
    MPREHENSION . . .
    PREHENSION . . .
    REHENSION . . .
    EHENSION . . .
    IX.
    I understood that the battle
    against the fifth element,
    the definitive battle, would take place
    on a street.
    At that moment, the battle began.
    â€“ Move the walls, I said.
    â€“ Move the walls, I shouted,
    and I moved all the walls from behind.
    (The general held my shoulder
    to keep me from having a wall at my back
    so I was victorious.)
    The general clapped my left shoulder
    and I had no wall at my back,
    just the general.
    It, the one in front of me, it
    ended up with no wall in back.
    It, from the fifth antiterrestrial element,
    having walls behind it,
    ended up with no walls in back.
    Because of the general and me,
    it ended up with no walls in back.
    All the houses on the street
    I moved with a brusque gesture,
    and it,
    the fifth antiterrestrial