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NIGHT SOFT AS AN ARGENTINEAN TANGO
Guessing from the flight of birds death has said
that nobody has yet turned our dead over in their grave
And whenever we come to the spring
we find the damp tongue of the earth
at the tip of sleep sensing the bitter taste of death
under an armpit atouch of inspiration – come
Come let us fetch meat dried by the moon
fruit tumbled at midnight
before morning cracking the embryo of stones
I’m afraid to look further throught the hole left by the moon
I’m afraid to show my splayed muscles
and old men say – let’s go it’s not so far
Fire – aflower knocking on ashell of stone
the dead are so passsionately silent listening to
whether the earth is still moving
THE CONNECTION
In this melancholy city where in the place of the synagogue
there’s apost office and Hebrew telephone calls wait for you.
You look up the numbers in the Old Testament, you ring, nobody
lifts the phone. Have they gone to tend flocks in the wilderness
or flown off in smoke?
Again agesture into emptiness, again the impossibility of connection.
The angel,
who connects you tries through Chaldean, Aramaic
but adialling code does not exist in these dings. Impossible
to leave amessage, your own number
for a call back. No calls from there. We are
without connection to the Old Testament and to the New
we have along cable. It’s as if the subscribers – the altered numbers –
have deliberately confused us. John the Evangelist
speaks as if with the voice of awoman. Don’t hang up on him,
miss, please, perhaps he’s writing another revelation,
but Ihave to break in on him with afew details.
It’s laid down. It’s given.
As when he says: Iam that who is.
Your additions to the fate of the world are late by two thousand years.
You won’t bribe anybody, they only take drachmas, that dusty
remuneration.
Perhaps the cows of Hebron will give milk
and festival twirls amessage could be made from cheese.
Festival twirls
we don’t take, the angel behind the counter shakes his head
especially not with amessage for the addressee.
It’s given. In amelancholy city, sentenced to beget money,
without adirect connection, only with literary contacts ,
dependent only on gossipy grandmas, through them –
Lord – how many moddlemen do you have, but such faint news –
at last you’ve got the signals.
It is given.
SPIDER, MELANCHOLY HUNTER,
keeper and victim,
spitting on his fingers he spins out of himself.
From matter the source of parables.
He spins from spittle until dry
as long as the source does not dry up.
But before that he will burn his web.
THIRD KNIFE
You who live at the edge of the world
at night despairingly drink water so that you might be pure
only statues are certain of their content.
Stars are the tracks left by birds heaped by the wind
when wood conducts fire according to your will
then wait if women weep hip against hip
and listen how it sounds
from bird to bird ahair teased out by the wind.
Love is the helmet we wear down to our ears
and nothing is excepted, Oh dog, wolf, bird, bull
but in the hearths in the lenses let us add more
so it cannot pluck out our eyes.
Of what Isay nothing will be fulfilled
but drinking from abank stay on the surface of the water
because water will wash the body to its bones
Only as long as the blue strings of blood are tensed
and feel the pulse’s touch
and sound out
Itell the truth, because nothing better occurs to me
Itry to touch the night on its most sensitive spot
and Isay
go on tiptoe so as not to wake the earth,
it is not yet spring
and only children and dogs can make out the earth.
Sharpen your knives on the steps
at night desapairingly drink water so that you might be pure
don’t be afraid, evil is in good hands
place the coin under the tongue
fingers on your eyelids
go.
And if the moon has gone
the better we will fight in the shadows.
Regard the tip of the knife deep within up
buried in the earth.
THE PALM OF AHAND WILL COVER
ACANDLE’S WICK
and love is stripped away in the flame
In the lee (right under your nose), in angelic hair
which flows like tears.
Asigh will blow out acandle, night closes itself.
Angel feathers darken, mature,
become overgrown with apelt,
not merely one that stamps its hoof.
And desire rakes out the hearth.
* * *
The spirit moved from aChristian
to aBuddhist temple.
It softened because touched by another.
It rattled as if overturned on the other side
and on it, where it lay
is something written in strange letters.
Only the body which is always Christian
reads it in Hebrew.
* * *
God, when they had knocked out all his teeth
and pulled out his fingernails and qhen
in exhaustion he had signed at last that he
did not exist, that he had never existed,
just sat
as if in the dock.
You whisper to him in this dream: “Others can, you must.
You exist
because Ineed you. Without your existence
mine would not be. How could my lesser
afflication remain either?”
“I know, Iretreat,
but Ido not surrender.”
* * *
From whom – if not from mankind
does the devil learn cruelty. He adds to his learning.
The devil who knew no mother and then does not know
what an old people’s home can mean.
He himself devised it, but mankind organises
atrip for virgins to aforeign land.
Eventually no-one can tell
on which side of death hell is.
* * *
Tatiana writes:
“I’m writing you aletter and what...”
in the midst of along ponder into which
destiny soaks – like astain on wall paper.
Life is ashout and silence death.
Thus Pushkin today dictates: “Tania, write:
Aletter for Onegin. And two copies!
Don’t forget. Two carbons!”
Death wouldn’t know how to be so cruel.
* * *
“Also asinful priest is apriest,” you found in Holan.
He’s talking about himself although perhaps it’s a
quotation
set in italics. Yet doesn’t it address you
even though from abook, you won’t be permitted to read?
He was abad priest though of good faith. Night after night
he conducted disputes with evil, so close... already he had
made out
on his face features of the devil. Thus in the morning he’d
shave himself urgently
so as to strip them off – down to the blood, down to
the last outline.
* * *
Hole, pit, chasm, grave
are between what is said and written,
and reading is following the tracks
left by yourself from time to time.
The eyes are quicker, mind delays,
in this advance of meaning, too; in reading
two processes of thought and just asingle head.
Truth is agreat tale. Brightening, darkening?
Singing, dreaming?
IN DISTRESS,
in time’s distress which every being has
atear of blood trickles down,
twofold,
undiscerned by the self
what is still tear and what is blood.
For blood, more of the body than atear
which is blood of the spirit,
stifles the heart and replaces vision:
with aview from agodly distance.
And in the grey pebble of each tear
asmall spark circles.
Translated byViera and James Sutherland-Smith
