6-across

once more i turn a circle, turn into the circle, an i-spiral, coiled through the eye. there is a word which is such eye to me, grotesquely small, in the metallic loop opened out – an instrument, introverted. the needle draws the eye through fabric’s tear into the slack with the thread – try the once to stay with the needle in the stuffslit, try the once – to hold together – this loophole with the thread.

a word rounded in six arcs, wrung-out and wrung-of, all eyes to me: nous. i found it in a strange language, rang it from it, stranger even, a petit neighborhood larceny, slick thieving lark that i am. i held it up, held out hel-hello, or oh well hello! and it talked back – in a singularly revolving assuring tone, a reassurance: nous nous. i found both in a sentence, as a surprise plucked from the air, in one book, through which he roamed – my travel companion. and i bid him stay, he bade me : athens, still remains! because i can’t speak the language, i count, count six bows, formed to loops, inspect the word, search similarities, analogies in construction : i’m a forger, bend iron around iron toward an unwornout word – halved infinities.

nous nous devons à la mort reads the sentence with the nous : a carnal conceit indeed, self-reflective captivity : nous nous we us. we are subject to this sentence — and object, around two halved infinities, and the death directions, a shot : à la mort. or has la mort already dispersed to the point — points to which we return — to a little find of ours.

so i dance the crosshairs, try, keep still — yes how apparent a sword severs the nous, imparts in pieces. on closer inspection, a sorta way out : human lives hang in the balance, say in one direction NOT, in the other US.

nous nous devons à la mort : we owe ourselves to death. so reads a translation of this sentence, one of many. we trace our reprieve with it, this dagger, that makes us immeasureable, that tries to stuff us in an untimely place, but the knotty strand pokes from the frame of the needle eye — there’s no getting through, not with us!

we owe ourselves to death : this sentence serves its time — nous nous — between halved infinities, between anyhow dispersed arcs, and its respite commutes the imagined lines back and forth.

I skimmed the strange language, whether or not i should have, severed one nous and left with a wordlet, a secret, and furnished two boxes, broadcast in my tongue, leaned against the arcs, braced, secreted and tucked in corners. then, i crawled in one box and after some time slipped out of the other. so slink through do i, so much do i tend toward liening and looping, word for word a cheat.