The Monkey Grammarian (20 page)

Nude, photographic proof taken by an electronic process, 1968,Leon D. Harmon (artist) and Kenneth C. Knowlton (engineer), (University of California)
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The body of Splendor as it divides, disperses, dissipates itself in my body as it divides, disperses, dissipates itself in the body of Splendor:

breathing, warmth, outline, bulk that beneath the pressure of my fingertips slowly ceases to be a confusion of pulses and gathers itself together and reunites with itself,

vibrations, waves that strike my closed eyelids as the street lamps go out and dawn staggers through the city: the body of Splendor before my eyes that gaze down on her as she lies between the sheets as I walk toward her in the dawn in the green light filtering through the enormous leaves of a banana tree onto an ocher footpath to Galta that leads me to this page where the body of Splendor lies between the sheets as I write on this page and as I read what I write,

an ocher footpath that suddenly starts walking, a river of burned waters seeking its path between the sheets, Splendor rises from the bed and walks about in the shadowy light of the room with staggering steps as the street lamps of the city go out:

The palace of Galta (18th century), (photograph by Eusebio Rojas).

she is searching for something, the dawn is searching for something, the young woman halts and looks at me: a squirrel gaze, a dawn gaze that lingers amid the leaves of the banyan tree along the ocher path that leads from Galta to this page, a gaze that is a well to be drunk from, a gaze in which I write the word reconciliation:

Splendor is this page, that which separates (liberates) and weaves together (reconciles) the various parts that compose it,

that which (the one who) is there, at the end of what I say, at the end of this page, and appears here as this phrase is uttered, as it dissipates,

the act inscribed on this page and the bodies (the phrases) that as they embrace give form to this act, this body:

the liturgical sequence and the dissipation of all rites through the double profanation (yours and mine), the reconciliation/liberation, of writing and reading

Cambridge, England, summer, 1970