��������

WIND

At the start cautious

like someone sightless

fumbling the home

and searching for the door

It bangs the window with its head

Walls will wail

window glass clink

chimneys begin to howl qith melancholy

and drums crack in the ears of jugs

��

Then on the door the latch rattles

like noon in a��pocket watch

and corners start to cuckoo midnight

��

Meanwhile the wind has dragged itself inside

the violin’s little cavity through the bass key

and is already whistling in church

in verses full of windlessnesss

��

And you mutely put up whit them

��

��

DESIRE

To get into the poem

like the pip in a��cherry

��

To tuck yourself up in it

as in a��lap

��

To sweat in it

as in your own skin

��

To preserve yourself in it

as in the grave

��

Words Words Words

��

Go poem go

take yourself off to an old willow

Whisper to the hollow trunk

So no-one can hear

��

that the poet is

naked

��

Words Words Words

All we have on

Nothing more

Nothing less

��

��

FALLING ASLEEP

Father,

who fashioned�� this bed

from punctilious planks

for a��whole life long

now help me seek out

lost children.

��

Or better a��new berth

fixed together from the unpunctual

bark of conifers

at least for one night

let me lie as in pine needles

let a��forest grow over me

��

Hasten

Already the moment is passing

Already somewhere it has caught fire

��

And a��squirrel

through the burnt-out ground

��

Behind her the dog

Amen

��

WHITE NIGHTS WITH A��ROOSTER

There’ll be, my daughter,

white nights

with a��rooster on the roof

Shadow split by lightning

A��double lonelinesss

��

And beyond the blaze of the slates

you’ll ignite a��field of poppies

Wolf-dark will come

��

You’ll go in a��red

circle

One leg

will catch up the other

��

There’ll be, my daughter,

red nights

with a��rooster in the well

A��multiple picture of the moon

sparkling beneath the surface

And�� how ever much you scoop up

then so much the less

��

You’ll drop the tiny key

of a��child’s treasure chest

into the well

��

You’ll hear upside-down buckets

rattle above the water

Behind the blind window the goatsucker

will hoot at billy goat corner:

��

(The maiden dreamed in a��white heat

her little bed caught fire beneath her)

��

She sleeps

Her pretty head streams out

over the bedside

��

as if she already knew

��

��

��Translated by��Viera and James Sutherland-Smith

��