Song of the Andoumboulou: 363
Nathaniel Mackey

I looked up at Brother B and Sister C on their
    heavenly couch, bodily remit all the more
  insistent in my hospital bed, a bed of bones
                                                                         un-
      dulating at will. It was only all there was,
  what there was. Brother B and Sister C added 
    up to Ruth one saw, Ruth among the loved
                                                                          ones
  of the stolen, the contingency of it the equa-
    tion we all were in . . . Ruth was mother, the
day the day we were born on. Adding a one
                                                                       every
      year was getting old, as were we, albeit we
  said the new number and sang it and celebra-
    ted. Ruth was as much mother as muse, caught
                                                                               be-
      tween she and she’d, would-be she, caught
  between she’d and shed, Beth but for that… Shed 
    adopted a jazz way of looking, Miles’s mute
Moorish and all of what Sonny said a breath to be
                                                                                 caught.
    I lay a part of it, apart from it, multiply dis-
      persed. I lay multiply discomforted, multiply 
  consoled, multiply unpersuaded we’d abide. 
                                                                          We
      were hearing the long song’s cap on longing
  when it occurred to us, polis’s perplexity sex
    or sex-polis, bodily presence’s own kept mind…
My bed was my boat, wave and particle both, a
                                                                             part
    and apart. My bed was my boat, let lie and lif-
      ted, low heist I lay caught up in. My bed was Osi-
ris’s boat but not, I knew, Brother B and Sister C’s
  heavenly couch the kite I flew. I stood up in bed,
                                                                                  rock-
    ing the boat. It was a drag to be back but I took
it in stride, true Ruthian saunter, a step she taught me
  one night. She’d was our futurity, shed, bed I stood
                                                                                      up
    in to fly my kite… A three-dimensional cartouche
      the kite containing Sister and Brother, a three-
  dimensional cartouche containing the sum Ruth was
                                                                                       or
she would be, she’d, shed, my bed my boat our sunk-
    en raft up from Down-the-Hill, the we we were
                                                                                 a-
  gain

                  •

    We had wound our way up and around the
sides of Pill Hill, high as a kite, a roundedness
  heaven’s lathe had cut. A Chinese boxkite it
                                                                         was
    or once was, the roundedness cut by heaven
      pre-cut, collapsed and compact, a flat pre-
  paredness anterior to itself… There was no way
                                                                               of
      knowing, a cast of the net not collecting. We
  lay rocked in the littlest bed I knew. That the 
    bed was my boat was my only hope it seemed
                                                                              at 
  points and at others no notion at all, hospital-
    head’s roust or recoil… Wound and ascesis. Re- 
call. Cartouche. Tidalectic out-and-back-in. On
                                                                             their
    heavenly couch Brother B lamented a certain
      someone he could see but not have, Sister 
C a certain someone too, rubbed up on each oth-
  er’s itchy skin all there was to know. From an 
                                                                             apart-
      ment tangential to the hospital one saw there
  was a hill Pill Hill itself stood on and always 
    a certain someone put one there, the dispensary
one’s whole head was… Much had been made
                                                                            of
    particle and wave and much more would be  
      made. Bumped and abraded pill, bumped and
  abraded particle, bumped and abraded pill and 
                                                                              par-
    ticle dust. A powder so fine it had the feel of
oil gris-gris’d it all, to such length my mother 
  at the foot of the bed spoke of Jeruth, her friend
                                                                                when
      I was young and her country way of saying
  Ruth I thought, thinking I was so smart. But
    the universe’s dilated eye looked in thru the op-
posite end of a telescope, my Socratic mother at
                                                                              the
      foot of the bed asking why was I there. The
  Hills of Jeruth lay behind her streaked with rain, 
    topos’s domain, a double task or a double take
                                                                                hos-
  pital head and heart flew by mounted by, topos’s
    horse’s ghost… The Hills of Jeruth smelled of
my mother’s friend’s perfume when I was young,
                                                                                nev-
    er more stout than when the weather turned hot
      and she’d visit, bloom the rain was feeding 
  I knew. “The Hills of Jeruth,” I lay whispering, a
                                                                                 recum-
     bency topos led, relaxing, an adjacency to wax-
  ing and rot. So did I rest assured an ontic hinter-
    land lay somewhere. It was what it was we were
convinced, Brother B, Sister C and me, a kind of
                                                                               ad-
    jacency likelihood-as-not grew suspended in.
It was what it was and what it wasn’t grew as well,
  a negative Jeruthian field athwart the positive, 
                                                                             all 
    we knew could go wrong… The Hills of Je-
      ruth made for a lead-out everted upward, 
topos and logos’s match and the heaven it afford-
  ed, heaven had no other way. Why I was there
                                                                             there
    was no other way I could answer, hospital
head or headedness, everyone knew, having its 
                                                                            own 
  account

          ____________________

  I vowed no fossil script would witness me,
    what steals away exactly steals away I 
said. The bed that was my boat sat atop Pill
                                                                       Hill,
    Noah’s ark atop Mount Ararat. My boat
bobbed in the troublesome air. My legs
  and my feet were bags of sand… I was
                                                                 miss-
      ing my lost body, logos and topos’s
  match made in heaven, the rollaway kite
    we flew… My room stood penthouse
                                                                 high.
  Lawn mowers, helicopters and grass-
    hoppers could be heard. Kite tails 
flapped in the wind. All of it only to say
                                                                 there 
      were levels to it, degrees and the ani- 
  madversion of degrees and levels, putative
                                                                       ami-
    ty, cave and col-  
  lapse  

                    •

    I lay for days on Pill Hill in Ruth’s care,
the Hills of Jeruth slightly beyond and be-
  low, psychogeographic horizon, heaven’s
                                                                      hope.
      Heaven’s hasp, for all we knew, was  
  all we knew, to know we knew not given.  
    There was talk of low blood, talk of de-
hydration, kidneys, potassium too high, too
                                                                      low…
      I was Brother B’s variant, Anuncio’s
  understudy, love’s orphan. I lay left alone.
    Except it all flew south Ruth’s way did
                                                                    not
      hold. Low Forest foliage went on unim-
        peded, prophetic albeit blasé the matte un-
  dersides of so many leaves, the Hills of Je-
    ruth’s alibi. I was thinking about equations, I
                                                                             lay 
      thinking about transpositions… It wasn’t
  only that though, maybe not mainly that,
    Rome’s fiddling Nub’s new and old gospel,
                                                                           body
  be not but politic, sick as it was. A talisman-
    ic music suffusing skin or the thought of 
skin, hospital head reared and rebuffed. None
                                                                          of
    it all there 
 was

          ____________________

    Churchical body, bodily church. Thick
walls padded with music. The Hills of
  Jeruth had to do with it as well, logos
                                                               and
    topos nowhere else as well met, now
        that I was Hospital Head… I was
      thinking I was already dead, missed
                                                                and
    lamented but done with, no escort’s
      arm supported mine. I was wondering 

did I know and what there was to know, my
  twenty-year state of siege, my medical
                                                                 saga,
      signifying what… Now that I was Hos- 
  pital Head, my head was one monistic
                                                                e-
    qual
sign

          ____________________

  None of it null, none of it enough. Nothing
    enough, nothing all of it. The much-ob-
structed it of it the law it turned out, except
                                                                       Ruth’s
    braided hair at bedtime broke it, the am-
      pleness of Ruth if nothing else… I sat up
  thinking about equations. I was thinking
                                                                   a-
bout transpositions. I was thinking about
    what Will would’ve called necessitous in-
  sufficiency, I and I’s autistic deck… I sat
                                                                     up
    thinking about transpositions. I sat up
      thinking I’d seen the light. I was think-
  ing I was already dead, the equilibrium 
                                                                 noth-
    ingness
  was