Conjunctions:63 Speaking Volumes

Fragments from Lost Zoroastrian Books
There where the sun rises

*
The edge of a razor

*
Of knowledge, not love

*
The several kinds of wheat

*
All good thoughts I think willingly; all good words I say willingly;
all good deeds I do willingly. All evil thoughts I think unwillingly;
all evil words I say unwillingly; all evil deeds I do unwillingly.

*
The skin on the head
[…]
The head of a man
[…]
One bone of the skull
[…]
All the blows that […] the skull are counted

*
One whose words are accepted

*
As much as the earth

*
Fifteen sheep, their hind feet

*
Libations offered by a liar

*
All the agreements in the world

*
The smallest of those stars is as large as the head of a man of middle size

*
He makes himself guilty of the sin of breaking a man’s leg

*
thwam khratus
[Meaning unknown.]

*
A place that gives pleasure, though not absolute pleasure

*
The column of life made marrowless

*
From there they come to kill and strike at heart, and they bring locusts, as many as they want

*
The ox rose up, the land bore

*
Soon he changed this to death by the fault of his tongue

*
Of the same thickness

*
For the first time he comes near to her, for the first time he lies beside her

*
What is between the kidneys and the spleen?

*
The shortest hathra is of three words
[Hathra: a measurement of both space and time.]

*
The dead shall rise up, life shall come back to the bodies, and they shall keep the breath

*
The man who […] does not […] anything, be it ever so little

*
badha idha afrasani danhubyo
[Meaning unknown.]

*
It becomes more violent than that

*
Give lawful, well-examined wood

*
Another man, of a steady leg, […] glory

*
stavano va puiti paidhi davaisne va
[Meaning unknown.]

*
Even uncovered and naked he will chant

*
How many sorts of plants are there?

*
If their fathers at once

*
In such a way that death should not be produced by burning

*
As much as a fly’s wing, or of a wingless

*
He calls him

*
Let no man alone by himself carry a corpse

*
By two fingers, O holy Zarathustra!

*
Of the dog-kind

*
Than the nose is to the ears, or than the ears are to the mouth

*
For all of them shall a path be opened across the Kinvad Bridge

*
As large as the top joint of the little finger

*
He has made the good waters and the good plants

*
And Paradise, boundless light, undeserved felicity

Eliot Weinberger’s books of essays include Karmic Traces, An Elemental Thing, and Oranges & Peanuts for Sale (all New Directions). Angels & Saints is forthcoming from New Directions/Christine Burgin.