ղľáԾ
WORDS
I complain of words
like children,
that they are disobedient.
In the head they were
to rights,
agreed,
with talents under arms,
ideally ready,
put through their paces, hankering to go,
selected, lined up, set in order,
some weeded out but then accepted back,
prepared to fly in a flock
to the meadows of meaning.
But out of doors they seemed to find it cold,
seemed to move clumsily and feebly
at their new home,
in tender ears.
O HEAD ON MY SHOULDERS
O head on my shoulders
weighing me down,
like a can spouting
sentences neat!
O stars in the heavens
nettling my eyes,
as pitiless night
fetters my feet!
While vainly the love
of everything grand
warms up my spirit
like knuckles that press,
in your pleasant thought
digging deep pits
is doubt about our
exclusiveness.
IMPERTINENTLY
I look at your cast-off clothes,
which cannot rise from the chair.
I look at your smiling face,
which cannot leave the photo.
I look at your heedful hands,
which cannot slip from the wheel.
WITHOUT LOVE
You lose time
dearer than salt,
without love
through the rigor-hole
you lose time.
You have forfeited time.
In less than a year you have forfeited all time.
You grow old
without children
who would answer
your questions with more beautiful
childish, real questions,
you grow old
without children
who on the brink of respect
would expressively rage at you
and would give you a cup of tea
respectfully full of stars,
you grow old
badly visible,
visible in the bad,
with contrasting deeds,
with deeds of other kinds,
and with deeds grasped otherwise
with another explanation in another brain,
in a fog of peevishness
unbelievably sad,
uselessly good.
You lose time
dearer than salt.
Your work also
is impatient therefore.
It waits,
waits things out,
quickly grows.
HOW PROFOUNDLY
How profoundly though, how earnestly
in the cosy lair of the eye
she hides me, silvered
in the grey pupil
like a mink,
me, improved, smoothed of wrinkles,
meticulously reduced,
many times a day.
Each of these moments I hold dear.
Translated byJohn Minahane
