诈术法师

Magus (Part 2)

By DASS

Translated by Ben Thompson

1

he’s reading in the lonely library

in a black T-shirt

brown curly hair piled on the skull

I can say “he”, because on close inspection

a gender can finally be confirmed

he sits with his back towards me

holding a huge book

so what does that matter?

Homer could tell right away

if it was a vagrant approaching from behind

because of his own country hobo days

in just the same way, every stranger

calling “don’t” from a hundred yards away

arouses my immense gratitude

even though we never met

strolling with me by the sunset river

there are so many instants

I long to slip into that lucid flow

2

how long has he been reading there

and reading about what,

and reading in what typeface‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍

but anyway what does it matter,

in the days of the Black Death

even a rabbi couldn't calm the crowd

a stream of earthworms pours from his book,

wind-dried letters elapse with broken

wings of black moths, like the claws of a bear

suddenly appearing on the lips of a vampire

while the city fills with the stink of disinfectant spray

but it's already too late, the King said,

by now he is already taking off his robe

he sits on his stone garden bench, utterly worn out

gesturing to his minions

to throw a rebel corpse behind the shade of a tree

the best way of fishing in the world

is just to sit by a lake

watching maggots crawl out of the dead

then with a flick of your slender arm

you pick up bait to throw on the water

oh, ripples on the deep

"people, it's a bright sunny day

the palace halls are cool, let's drink

let's drag that old singing sailor

down to my stables

to stop him disturbing the feast"

3

not a soul, not one passer-by

can make this reader in the lonely library

lift his head, shift his gaze, or make a sound

he floats in his own boundless universe

like a black fly

even if an H bomb falls

or his spaceship disintegrates,

or alchemy meets secret binary codes

probably nothing really happened

the rabbit hole is beautiful, right now

he sits by the burrow’s edge, amazed

at how much time he has already wasted

right up until I die, you see

he still sits there, perfectly still,

the black T shirt just a fraudulent prop

the brown hair holding up his magus skull

Translated (first attempt) Dec/Jan 2023 BT

revised 7 Jan 2023