Poems

BERLIN PASTEL

There’s never a need for preparatory stages
nor for lies about the state of grace
in the morning light of autumn on this street
this celebrated civilized street long accommodating
only the fortunate
an indifferent arm takes measurements puts up wood stakes
the Missa solemnis as background
goes about its task with great precision unerringly separates
my youth from its description
melodrama from drama

the rhythm of hammer blows suddenly echoes
happily almost caressingly toward one end of the street
and like a character of cruel necessary curses
back from the other.


THIS YEAR IN THE MONTH OF MARCH

The end lies further ahead, that’s all. The prospects
have sometimes turned to face me too, speaking
their language and jumping from one thing to the other.
In the evening
I watch the political map of the world
and can’t make
much sense of it, creatures of all sorts
do their own thing in the sarcastic ruins
of memory, I feel fine, naturally, what an uproar
on the anniversary of nothingness, oh yes, I order
the magnet to descend from around my forehead
and it does so, I order a fiction
to rot in the doorway, in the dark passage, as long as
from the height of this age that’s so dear to me
thunders are heard and lightning flashes and rain holds off.


MUCH LATHER

I used to mercilessly slap
the mouth of the volcano.
Now I hardly dare breathe
under the golden boots
of the tale.

About all this much later
someone will talk
and someone else
will tell him he’s lying.


The starting line

And what more do you have to learn

change yourself! change!

darkness takes root
in the boiling of a pupil

preliminary studies reveal that for Easterners
the lust for life of someone who’s dying
still weighs more heavily on the scales
than a coat of arms inherited at birth

stand straight with a pretty smile
with conviction obedience and correctness
describe the traditional menu not even the devil can surpass you at
instead of light sauces with exotic herbs
a cheap concentrate of schizophrenia sarcasm somnolence
unfathomable hatred for the Home
unfathomable love for the Home
where the system itself placed you

so exactly what must you refuse to learn

history has broken its neck a disgusted multitude
waits to ambush it on Mount Gethsemane

no, don’t stop when you cross the finish line
your twin brother is standing right there he holds out his hat.


A commonplace denouement

Can darkness be polyglot?
And if not, why this morning did I hear it
saying the exact same thing in several tongues
and why did I see it draped in syntax
creeping toward the circle where I stood, by coincidence,
next to you on the map?
Only the fiery hot sea-wall remained there,
the romantic wasteland, the ultimate destination
in the official schedule so alive and slippery
in the fishnet of promise.

From the heights with a drum roll,
wearing the robes of the Fate, a commonplace denouement
descends upon the waltz of celebrities, its clever embrace.


The hunt for relics

A hermit’s retreat painfully built
from front cover to back cover
on its threshold magical stratagems stolen from youth
the blizzard when we met
the greed that budded the universe
that summer day along the sea-wall

eternity accompanies you as you set out
from the cathedral tower on the hunt for relics
her cheap game bag is the envy
of herds of cyclopes and bacchantes
Aesopic swarms liking
the strange square black signs on the map

in the hermit’s small cell on the edge of the bed
an alternative syntax blindly fumbles
and in its aura
as in an improvised ashtray
our common Godforsaken past
still smolders.


The natural cycle of compromise

Something in particular a glove encrusted with scales a monstrous danger
attracts the compromised words the fog in the world’s dictionaries
the sun strains to rise over a mountain of masks
its rays become lost for yet another season
the mind ingratiates itself with every possible variant of death
the soul with only the confused knife blade of the recent historical epoch

we’ll be happy in our fear it might avenge itself
unhappy in our fear we might live to avenge it.