I never have the courage to speak of you
vast sky of my neighborhood
nor you roofs holding off cascades of air
lovely downy roofs the hair of our homes
Nor you chimneys laboratories of sorrow
spurned by the moon stretching out necks
Nor of you windows opened and closed
which burst when we are dying overseas
I cannot even describe the house
which knows all my escapes and my returns
though so small it stays under my shut eyelid
nothing can render the smell the green curtain
the creak of stairs I ascend carrying a lit lamp
nor the greenery over the gate
In fact I want to write of the house’s gate latch
of its rough handshake and its friendly creaks
but although I know so much about it
I use only a cruelly common litany of words
So many feelings fit between two heartbeats
so many objects can be held in our two hands
Don’t be surprised we can’t describe the world
and just address things tenderly by name
INCORRIGIBILITY
Here is my paltry beauty
fragile as hair and glass
I lay out my singing gear
on the shores of capitals on terror’s eve
here’s a little cup of exaltation
and a chord like a dead cricket
a lute the size of a child’s hand
false shadow a made-up laugh
here’s a chest with sunset colors
a casket of caresses vial of tears
a ringlet of music and of youth
I’ll carry it like bread and love
my body passing the iron rails
here is my fragile beauty
I lay out my singing gear
on seashores on light sand
the surf seeing my flightiness
offers not a flower but a stone
MATURITY
It’s good what happened
it’s good what’s going to happen
even what’s happening right now
it’s OK
In a nest pleated from the flesh
there lived a bird
its wings beat about the heart
we mostly called it: unrest
and sometimes: love
evenings
we went along the rushing sorrow river
in the river one could see oneself
from head to toe
now
the bird has fallen to the bottom of the clouds
the river has sunk into the sand
helpless as children
and practised as old men
we are—simply—free
that is—ready to depart
In the night a nice old man arrives
and coaxes us with an enticing gesture
—who are you?—we ask in alarm
—Seneca—say those who finished grammar school
and those who don’t know Latin
just call me: the deceased
WHITE STONE
I just close my eyes—
my steps move away from me
air eats them like a muted bell
and a far-off voice my own voice calling
congeals into a knot of steam
hands fall
cupped around a calling mouth
that blind animal touch
retreats into the interior
to dark and moist caves
the body’s odor remains
and candle wax burning
then it grows in me
neither fear nor love
but the white stone
so this is how it fulfills itself
fate that draws us on the mirror of a stone carving
I see a sunken face protruding chest dull shells of knees
chipped feet and a wreath of dry fingers
deeper than earth’s blood
more luscious than a tree
there is the white stone
an indifferent plenitude
but again eyes shriek
and the stone retreats
it is a sand grain now
sunk under the heart
we swallow images fill a void
the voice struggles with space
ears hands mouth tremble under waterfalls
a ship carrying Indian perfumes
sails into the shell of the nostrils
rainbows bloom from sky to eye
wait white stone
I’ll just close my eyes
BALCONIES
Balconies eheu I am not a keeper of sheep
not for me a myrtle grove stream or clouds
I was left balconies an Arcadian in exile
I look out over roofs as over the open sea
where the long plaint of sinking ships rises
what remains for me the wail of mandolins
a brief flight and a fall to the stony depths
to wait among gawkers for the eternal tide
offering up a little blood in return
This is not what I waited for it is not youth
to stand with a bandaged head arms folded
and say you idiot heart you wounded bird
stay here on the cliff in the green enclosure
there’s sweet pea and nasturtium blossoms
at dusk a wind comes from the shorn gardens
with dandruff on its collar breeze lame storm
plaster sifts on the deck on the balcony deck
with a bound head a cable end a tuft of hair
I stand in the stony pomp of senile elements
yes clock yes poison it will be the only journey
a journey by ferry to the other bank of the river
there you find no shadow of sea or islands
only the shadows of those whom we loved
yes just a ferry journey just a ferry in the end
O balconies what pain vagrants are singing
down below and a voice joins in their wails
a voice of atonement before the ferry sets off
—forgive me I didn’t love you enough
I squandered my youth looking for true gardens
looking for true islands in the thunder of waves
FURNISHED ROOM
In this room there are three suitcases
a bed not mine
a wardrobe with a mildewed mirror
when I open the door
the furniture freezes
I’m met by a familiar smell
sweat insomnia and sheets
one picture on the wall
represents Vesuvius
with its crest of smoke
I never saw Vesuvius
I don’t believe in living volcanoes
the other picture
is a Dutch interior
out of the shadow
a woman’s hands
are tipping a jug
from which a braid of milk trickles
on the table a knife a napkin
bread fish a bunch of onions
following a golden light
we come to three steps
the open doors reveal
the square of a garden
the leaves breathe in the light
birds sustain the day’s sweetness
an untrue world
warm as bread
gold as an apple
flaking wallpaper
unfamiliar furniture
leucoma of mirrors
these are true interiors
in my room
and in three suitcases
the day dissolves
in the pool of a dream
THE RAIN
When my older brother
came back from war
he had on his forehead a little silver star
and under the star
an abyss
a splinter of shrapnel
hit him at Verdun
or perhaps at Grünwald
(he’d forgotten the details)
he used to talk much
in many languages
but he liked most of all
the language of history
until losing breath
he commanded his dead pals to run
Roland Kowalski Hannibal
he shouted
that this was the last crusade
that Carthage soon would fall
and then sobbing confessed
that Napoleon did not like him
we looked at him
getting paler and paler
abandoned by his senses
he turned slowly into a monument
into musical shells of ears
entered a stone forest
and the skin of his face
was secured
with the blind dry
buttons of eyes
nothing was left him
but touch
what stories
he told with his hands
in the right he had romances
in the left soldier’s memories
they took my brother
and carried him out of town
he returns every fall
slim and very quiet
he does not want to come in
he knocks at the window for me
we walk together in the streets
and he recites to me
improbable tales
touching my face
with blind fingers of rain
BIOLOGY TEACHER
I cannot remember
his face
He towered over me
his long legs spread
and I saw
a gold chain
an ash-colored vest
and a scrawny neck
with a dead bow-tie
pinned on
he was first to show us
the leg of a dead frog
touched with a needle
it contracted violently
he led us
through golden binoculars
into the intimate life
of our ancestor
the paramecium
he brought in
a dark kernel
and said: ergot
on his insistence
I became a father
at the age of ten
when after a tense wait
a chestnut sunk in water
released a yellow shoot
and everything around
burst into song
in the second year of the war
our biology teacher was killed
by history’s schoolyard bullies
if he went to heaven—
perhaps he now strolls
along long rays of light
wearing gray stockings
with an enormous net
and with a green box
happily banging behind
but if he didn’t go up—
when on a path in summer
I meet a beetle clambering
over a mound of sand
I go up to it
make a bow
and say:
—good day Sir
permit me to assist you—
I transfer him gingerly
and watch him go off
until he has vanished
into his murky professor’s office
at the end of an avenue of leaves
BAMBOO GATHERER
What a thick mist
a gray haze overhead
before me I see only
stalks of bamboo
where are the skies
roiling with clouds
and with light
the fine gentlemen
on the terrace study
a nightingale and rose
on threads of silk
the fine gentlemen
recite their prayers
before them dangles
the sun’s gold braid
the cries of wild birds
thick mist
I see a torrential gray
rain of bamboo
MADONNA WITH LION
You can cross the earth by donkey
but really Mary likes to get around
on a moon as plump as a carp
and as shiny as a barber’s tray
Trees of Genesis lift their heads
initial flowers sigh wondrously
praise be to you—the birds cry
—Good-day—replies the queen of prophets
the carpenter’s wife
Mary
but most of all she likes to travel
astride a tawny and athletic lion
who moves smoothly and lightly
and when he shakes his mane
tame lightning flashes shoot out
This lion’s goodness is inhuman
and he takes everything seriously
smells symbols under every tree
behind Mary strides a double-edged Angel
brimming with ultimate words
and following him Mary’s favorite—Johnny Angel
carrying her coat and shadow folded four times
Johnny Angel is chubby and good-natured
he only has no hearing
they are almost there
the lion roars smelling his stable of carrots
at the end of a box-hedge avenue
the colorful border post of heaven
THE SEVENTH ANGEL
The seventh angel
is completely different
even his name is different
Shemkel
he is no Gabriel
the aureate
upholder of the throne
and baldachin
and he’s no Raphael
tuner of choirs
and he’s also no
Azrael
planet-driver
surveyor of infinity
perfect exponent of theoretical physics
Shemkel
is black and nervous
and has been fined many times
for illegal import of sinners
between the abyss
and the heavens
without a rest his feet go pit-a-pat
his sense of dignity is non-existent
and they only keep him in the squad
out of consideration for the number seven
but he is not like the others
not like the hetman of the hosts
Michael
all scales and feathery plumes
nor like Azrafael
interior decorator of the universe
warden of its luxuriant vegetation
his wings shimmering like two oak trees
not even like
Dedrael
apologist and cabalist
Shemkel Shemkel
—the angels complain
why are you not perfect
the Byzantine artists
when they paint all seven
reproduce Shemkel
just like the rest
because they suppose
they might lapse into heresy
if they were to portray him
just as he is
black nervous
in his old threadbare nimbus
ON TRANSLATING POETRY
Like a clumsy bumblebee
he alights on a flower
bending the fragile stem
he elbows his way
through rows of petals
like pages of a dictionary
he wants in
where the fragrance and sweetness are
and though he has a cold
and can’t taste anything
he pushes on
until he bumps his head
against the yellow pistil
and that’s as far a
s he gets
it’s too hard
to push through the calyx
into the root
so the bee takes off again
he emerges swaggering
loudly humming:
I was in there
and those
who don’t take his word for it
can take a look at his nose
yellow with pollen
ROSY EAR
I thought
but I know her so well
we have been living together so many years
I know
her bird-like head
white arms
and belly
until one time
on a winter evening
she sat down beside me
and in the lamplight
falling from behind us
I saw a rosy ear
a comic petal of skin
a conch with living blood
inside it
I didn’t say anything then—
it would be good to write
a poem about a rosy ear
but not so that people would say
what a subject he chose
he’s trying to be eccentric
so that nobody even would smile
so that they would understand that I proclaim
a mystery
I didn’t say anything then
but that night when we were in bed together
delicately I essayed
the exotic taste
of a rosy ear
EPISODE
We walk by the sea-shore
holding firmly in our hands
the two ends of an antique dialogue
—do you love me?
—I love you
with furrowed eyebrows
I summarize all wisdom
of the two testaments
astrologers prophets
philosophers of the gardens
and cloistered philosophers
and it sounds about like this:
—don’t cry
—be brave
—look how everybody
you pout your lips and say
—you should be a clergyman
and fed up you walk off
nobody loves moralists
what should I say on the shore of
a small dead sea
slowly the water fills
the shapes of feet which have vanished
SILK OF A SOUL
Never
did I speak—with her
either about love
or about death
only blind taste
and mute touch
used to run between us
when absorbed in ourselves
we lay close
I must
peek inside her
to see what she wears
at her centre
when she slept
with her lips open
The Collected Poems Page 6