Two-Part Inventions

Anne Winters

ONE

The First Invention, ear laid to earth, is listening

to the fingerlength underground beings moving in segments

through tiny tunnels; one inch shrugs out another,

as bamboo climbs in segments, joint by green joint ...

Or an inexpressive mask that must travel

the world, uphill and down, always keeping its own

counsel, impelling forwardfrom inward—

unspelling a logic that cannot look out or see.

Or a thought that recurs, till one wonders

whether Bach’s theme, without cause, or pause,

is like a cat in a night-closet, the cat evenly leaping

from level to level; the theme that sinks down

into one hand, next leaps to the other, reprises itself,

then doubles down softly, a counterpane on a shelf.

SIX

Have you ever noticed, in Piranesi’s Carceri

d’invenzione, the tiny repeating figures in the foreground?

Brittle, frugal, fugal, they ignore that above them

stairways rise out of sight, and somewhere else

collapse, in-swallowed, devolving through walls or domes.

The same way Bach’s motive splays out to the right,

swoons flatly, swans it, footnotes, follows up,

talks to itself, purls, mutters, dawdles, resumes ...

Six is playing at infancy, one three five,

that’s all baby knows, a block pile clumsily building.

Then the tall chord falls sideways—pretends

it’s a melody—everyone knows it’s a chord—

or a problem in long division which at one point just sticks

on that endless, that déjà vu decimal, six six six ...

ELEVEN

Eleven is caterpillars, two, marching: the one

stave of thick-barred sixteenth notes set down

precisely beneath the other, tiptoe to toetip,

close-clinging, rising and falling and mirrored:

one looks down and locks the other’s horns,

or its own; the two could be said to be linked

like the locked yet endlessly out-spiraling

spindled ribbons of DNA. Yet there’s something

scary, like Cicero’s dizzying concept

of motus animi, hurtling mind unstoppably inventing

figures on figures, yet with no vanishing point,

a world of ladders or stairwells

where space keeps revolving, welling up into space

endless, unfree, unfolding like stairs in a case.

295

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Snails by Francis Ponge

Unlike the ashes that make their home with hot coals, snails prefer moist earth. Go on: they advance while gluing themselves to it with their entire bodies. They carry it, they eat it, they shit it. They go through it, it goes through them. It’s the best kind of interpenetration, as between tones, one passive and one active. The passive bathes and nourishes the active, which overturns the other while it eats.

(There is more to be said about snails. First of all their immaculate clamminess. Their sangfroid. Their stretchiness.)

One can scarcely conceive of a snail outside its shell and unmoving. The moment it rests it sinks down deep into itself. In fact, its modesty obliges it to move as soon as it has shown its nakedness and  revealed its vulnerable shape. The moment it’s exposed, it moves on.

During periods of dryness they withdraw into ditches where it seems their bodies are enough to maintain their dampness. No doubt their neighbors there are toads and frogs and other ectothermic animals. But when they come out again they don’t move as quickly. You have to admire their willingness to go into the ditch, given how hard it is for them to come out again.

Note also that though snails like moist soil, they have no affection for places that are too wet such as marshes or ponds. Most assuredly they prefer firm earth, as long as it’s fertile and damp.

They are fond as well of moisture-rich vegetables and green leafy plants. They know how to feed on them leaving only the veins, cutting free the most tender leaves. They are hell on salads.

What are these beings from the depths of the ditches? Though snails love many of their trenches’ qualities they have every intention of leaving. They are in their element but they are also wanderers. And when they emerge into the daylight onto firm ground their shells will preserve their vagabond’s hauteur.

It must be a pain to have to haul that trailer around with them everywhere, but they never complain and in the end they are happy about it. How valuable, after all, to be able to go home any time, no matter where you may find yourself, eluding all intruders. It must be worth it.