Excerpt From The Surface Of Last Scattering
Ramelli’s Reading Wheel
Albertian in its ingenuity, designed so the spirit might triumph
Over matter, Ramelli’s small ferris suits the scholar with gout,
Or any bibliophile who chooses not to move. This fifteenth
Century convenience holds, each on its lectern, ten open
Books, that seem, when the wheel is turned, about to topple
On the reader’s head, but the books journey downward
Toward the floor, slightly disorienting, but without consequence,
Taking the thirsty from the ladle of knowledge to the well,
From what will suffice to that last scattering of knowledge
Where all becomes faint and immeasurable. Ninety-two
Wedges and glueless joints, all wood, built for the humanist
Of Raphael and Leonardo, a figure who exists for the
Intersection of square with circle, so the turned wheel
Becomes a multiplying circle, the axles rotating accurately,
Each book presented suitably angled for the acquisitive gaze.
The Ten Books
1
On the Manufacture of Sails Through the Ages With Appendices
Devoted to the Techniques of Phoenician and Sicilian Shipwrights.
2
The Five Sacred Roles of the Admirable King: Judge, Conqueror,
Master of Servants, Censor and Orderer of the Universe.
3
The Legal Code of Mesopotamia Concerning Wrongful Speech,
Especially in the Cases of Women (Gossip) and Peasants (Slander).
4
The Making of Noteworthy Eunuchs: Training Before and After
Incision, With a Guide to the Stanching of Blood.
5
Our Lady of the Date Palm, Our Lady of Contraptions and Riggings,
Our Lady of Underground Stores: Litany for a Few Lesser Saints.
6
The Painted and Gilded Kayiks of the Bosphorus:
The Ottoman Nobility at Play.
7
Desolate Defiles and Raging Rivers: A Norseman’s Travels.
8
Preventing and Treating Saddle Sores in the Livery
While Delousing Vagabonds and Hapless Wayfarers.
9
The Hair Shirt and Other Oddments of Penance.
10
Pirates and Plunderers, Sackers of Cities:
Rapacity at Work in the Modern World.
The architect, Daniel Libeskind, discovered a few years ago
When he built Capitano Agostina Ramelli’s wheel, the first
To exist, working with the old tools and by candlelight,
Striving to become the pure medieval craftsman, Ramelli’s drawings
Were exquisitely rendered; all parts fit together flawlessly.
My reading machine’s a haphazard miscellany of books,
Journals, papers, magazines, scattered upstairs, downstairs,
Even in the car, and the churring I hear is my cognitive
Wheel—that slow reordering and composting of facts
And images that rise up from the surface of the text
To become a reverie, or sleeplessness, the thickening
Embroidered tapestry that is the backdrop of a world.
What is a book that it unfolds for us what no other
Medium can? Delightful, troublesome, lavish, implicating,
A day or two, a week’s desultory reading is not unlike
The sparkling shoals of jeweled fish ornaments
The women of a sultan’s harem would drag in chains
Behind their excursion boats, the fish fanning out
Over the boat’s wake, dazzling in their radiant shimmer—
The texture of life that flickers in the trail of a book.
The Surface of Last Scattering. Copyright: Texas Review Press, Huntsville, TX 77341.