In the old master's landscape,
the trees have roots beneath the oil paint,
the path undoubtedly reaches its goal,
the signature is replaced by a stately blade of grass,
it's a persuasive five in the afternoon,
May has been gently, yet firmly, detained,
so I've lingered, too. Why, of course, my dear,
I am the woman there, under the ash tree.
Just see how far behind I've left you,
see the white bonnet and the yellow skirt I wear,
see how I grip my basket so as not to slip out of the painting,
how I strut within another's fate
and rest awhile from living mysteries.
Even if you called I wouldn't hear you,
and even if I heard I wouldn't turn,
and even if I made that impossible gesture
your face would seem a stranger's face to me.
I know the world six miles around.
I know the herbs and spells for every pain.
God still looks down on the crown of my head.
I still pray I won't die suddenly.
War is punishment and peace is a reward.
Shameful dreams all come from Satan.
My soul is as plain as the stone of a plum.
I don't know the games of the heart.
I've never seen my children's father naked.
I don't see the crabbed and blotted draft
that hides behind the Song of Songs.
What I want to say comes in ready-made phrases.
I never use despair, since it isn't really mine,
only given to me for safekeeping.
Even if you bar my way,
even if you stare me in the face,
I'll pass you by on the chasm's edge, finer than a hair.
On the right is my house. I know it from all sides,
along with its steps and its entry way,
behind which life goes on unpainted.
The cat hops on a bench,
the sun gleams on a pewter jug,
a bony man sits at the table
fixing a clock.
A few clods of dirt, and his life will be forgotten.
The music will break free from circumstance.
No more coughing of the maestro over minuets.
Poultices will be torn off.
Fire will consume the dusty, lice-ridden wig.
Ink spots will vanish from the lace cuff.
The shoes, inconvenient witnesses, will be tossed on the trash heap.
The least gifted of his pupils will get the violin.
Butchers' bills will be removed from between the music sheets.
His poor mother's letters will line the stomachs of mice.
The ill-fated love will fade away.
Eyes will stop shedding tears.
The neighbors' daughter will find a use for the pink ribbon.
The age, thank God, isn't Romantic yet.
Everything that's not a quartet
will become a forgettable fifth.
Everything that's not a quintet
will become a superfluous sixth.
Everything that's not a choir made of forty angels
will fall silent, reduced to barking dogs, a gendarme's belch.
The aloe plant will be taken from the window
along with a dish of fly poison and the pomade pot,
and the view of the garden (oh yes!) will be revealed -
the garden that was never here.
Now hark! ye mortals, listen, listen now,
take heed, in rapt amazement,
O rapt, O stunned, O heedful mortals, listen,
O listeners - now listen - be all ears -
AN OPINION ON THE QUESTION OF PORNOGRAPHY
There's nothing more debauched than thinking.
This sort of wantonness runs wild like a wind-born weed
on a plot laid out for daisies.
Nothing's sacred for those who think.
Calling things brazenly by name,
risque' analyses, salacious syntheses,
frenzied, rakish chases after the bare facts,
the filthy fingering of touchy subjects,
discussion in heat - it's music to their ears.
In broad daylight or under cover of night
they form circles, triangles, or pairs.
The partners' age or sex are unimportant.
Their eyes glitter, their cheeks are flushed.
Friend leads friend astray.
Degenerate daughters corrupt their fathers.
A brother pimps for his little sister.
They prefer the fruits
from the forbidden tree of knowledge
to the pink buttocks found in glossy magazines -
all that ultimately simple-hearted smut.
The books they relish have no pictures.
What variety they have lies in certain phrases
marked with a thumbnail or a crayon.
It's shocking, the positions,
the unchecked simplicity with which
one mind contrives to fertilize another!
Such positions the Kama Sutra itself doesn't know.
During these trysts of theirs, the only thing that's steamy is the tea.
People sit on their chairs and move their lips.
Fveryone crosses only his own legs
so that one foot is resting on the floor
while the other dangles freely in midair.
Only now and then does somebody get up,
go to the window,
and through a crack in the curtains
take a peep out at the street.
After every war
someone has to tidy up.
Things won't pick
themselves up, after all.
Someone has to shove
the rubble to the roadsides
so the carts loaded with corpses
can get by.
Someone has to trudge
through sludge and ashes,
through the sofa springs,
the shards of glass,
the bloody rags.
Someone has to lug the post
to prop the wall,
someone has to glaze the window,
set the door in its frame.
No sound bites, no photo opportunities,
and it takes years.
All the cameras have gone
to other wars.
The bridges need to be rebuilt,
the railroad stations, too.
Shirtsleeves will be rolled
to shreds.
Someone, broom in hand,
still remembers how it was.
Someone else listens, nodding
his unshattered head.
But others are bound to be bustling nearby
who'll find all that
a little boring.
From time to time someone still must
dig up a rusted argument
from underneath a bush
and haul it off to the dump.
Those who knew
what this was all about
must make way for those
who know little.
And less than that.
And at last nothing less than nothing.
Someone has to lie there
in the grass that covers up
the causes and effects
with a cornstalk in his teeth,
gawking at clouds.
I knock at the stone's front door.
"It's only me, let me come in.
I want to enter your insides,
have a look round,
breathe my fill of you."
"Go away," says the stone.
"I'm shut tight.
Even if you break me to pieces,
we'll all still be closed.
You can grind us to sand,
we still won't let you in."
I knock at the stone's front door.
"It's only me, let me come in.
I've come out of pure curiosity.
Only life can quench it.
I mean to stroll through your palace,
then go calling on a leaf, a drop of water.
I don't have much time.
My mortality should touch you."
"I'm made of stone," says the stone,
"and must therefore keep a straight face.
Go away.
I don't have the muscles to laugh."
I knock at the stone's front door.
"It's only me, let me come in.
I hear you have great empty halls inside you,
unseen, their beauty in vain,
soundless, not echoing anyone's steps.
Admit you don't know them well yourself."
"Great and empty, true enough," says the stone,
"but there isn't any room.
Beautiful, perhaps, but not to the taste
of your poor senses.
You may get to know me, but you'll never know me through.
My whole surface is turned toward you,
all my insides turned away."
I knock at the stone's front door.
"It's only me, let me come in.
I don't seek refuge for eternity.
I'm not unhappy.
I'm not homeless.
My world is worth returning to.
I'll enter and exit empty-handed.
And my proof I was there
will be only words,
which no one will believe."
"You shall not enter," says the stone.
"You lack the sense of taking part.
No other sense can make up for your missing sense of taking part.
Even sight heightened to become all-seeing
will do you no good without a sense of taking part.
You shall not enter, you have only a sense of what that sense should be,
only its seed, imagination."
I knock at the stone's front door.
"It's only me, let me come in.
I haven't got two thousand centuries,
so let me come under your roof."
"If you don't believe me," says the stone,
"just ask the leaf it will tell you the same.
Ask a drop of water, it will say what the leaf has said.
And, finally, ask a hair from your own head.
I am bursting with laughter, yes, laughter, vast laughter,
although I don't know how to laugh."
I knock at the stone's front door.
"It's only me, let me come in.
"I don't have a door," says the stone.
It could have happened.
It had to happen.
It happened earlier. Later. Nearer. Farther off.
It happened, but not to you.
You were saved because you were the first.
You were saved because you were the last.
Alone. With others. On the right. The left.
Because it was raining. Because of the shade.
Because the day was sunny.
You were in luck - there was a forest.
You were in luck - there were no trees.
You were in luck - a rake, a hook, a beam, a brake,
a jamb, a turn, a quarter inch, an instant.
You were in luck - just then a straw went floating by.
As a result, because, although, despite.
What would have happened if a hand, a foot,
within an inch, a hairsbreadth from
an unfortunate coincidence.
So you're here? Still dizzy from another dodge, close shave, reprieve?
One hole in the net and you slipped through?
I couldn't be more shocked or speechless.
Listen,
how your heart pounds inside me.
This isn't Miss Duncan, the noted danseuse?
Not the drifting cloud, the wafting zephyr, the Bacchante,
moonlit waters, waves swaying, breezes sighing?
Standing this way, in the photographer's atelier,
heftily, fleshily wrested from music and motion,
she's cast to the mercies of a pose,
forced to bear false witness.
Thick arms raised above her head,
a knotted knee protrudes from her short tunic,
left leg forward, naked foot and toes,
with 5 (count them) toenails.
One short step from eternal art into artificial eternity
I reluctantly admit that it's better than nothing
and more fitting than otherwise.
Behind the screen, a pink corset, a handbag,
in it a ticket for a steamship
leaving tomorrow, that is, sixty years ago;
never again, but still at nine a. m. sharp.
They say I looked back from curiosity.
But I could have had reasons other than curiosity.
I looked back from regret for a silver howl.
From distraction while fastening the latchet of my sandal.
To avoid looking longer at the righteous neck
of Lot my husband.
From sudden certainty that had I died
he would not even have slowed his step.
From the disobedience of the meek.
Alert to the pursuit.
Suddenly serene, hopeful that God had changed His mind.
Our two daughters were almost over the hilltop.
I felt old age within me. Remoteness.
The futility of our wandering. Sleepiness.
I looked back while laying my bundle on the ground.
I looked back frqm fear of where next to set my foot.
On my path appeared serpents,
spiders, field mice, and fledgling vultures.
By now it was neither the righteous nor the wicked - simply all living creatures
crept and leapt in common panic.
I looked back from loneliness.
From shame that I was stealing away.
From a desire to shout, to return.
Or just when a sudden gust of wind
undid my hair and lifted up my garment.
I had the impression they watched it all from the walls of Sodom
and burst out in loud laughter time and time again.
I looked back from anger.
To relish their great ruin.
I looked back for all the reasons I have mentioned.
I looked back despite myself.
It was only a rock that turned back, growling under foot.
A sudden crevice that cut my path.
On the edge a hamster scampered, up on his two hind feet.
It was then that we both glanced back.
No, no. I ran on,
I crept and clambered up,
until the darkness crashed down from heaven,
and with it, burning gravel and dead birds.
For lack of breath I spun about repeatedly.
If anyone had seen me, he might have thought me dancing.
It is not ruled out that my eyes were open.
It could be that I feel, my face turned toward the city.
She must be willing to please.
To change so that nothing should change.
It's easy, impossible, hard, worth trying.
Her eyes are if need be now deep blue, now gray,
dark, playful, filled for no reason with tears.
She sleeps with him like some chance acquaintance, like his one and only.
She will bear him four children, no children, one.
Naive yet giving the best advice.
Weak yet lifting the weightiest burdens.
Has no head on her shoulders but will have.
Reads Jaspers and ladies' magazines.
Doesn't know what this screw is for and will build a bridge.
Young, as usual young, as always still young.
Holds in her hands a sparrow with a broken wing,
her own money for a journey long and distant,
a meat-cleaver, poultice, and a shot of vodka.
Where is she running so, isn't she tired?
Not at all, just a bit, very much, doesn't matter.
Either she loves him or has made up her mind to.
For better, for worse, and for heaven's sake.
Memory at last has what it sought.
My mother has been found, my father glimpsed.
I dreamcd up for them a table, two chairs. They sat down.
Once more they seemed close, and once more living for me.
With the lamps of their two faces, at twilight,
they suddenly gleamed as if for Rembrandt.
Only now can I relate
the many dreams in which they've wandered, the many throngs
in which I've pulled them out from under wheels,
the many death-throes where they have collapsed into my arms.
Cut off - they would grow back crooked.
Absurdity forced them into masquerade.
Small matter that this could not hurt them outside me
if it hurt them inside me.
The gawking rabble of my dreams heard me calling "mamma"
to something that hopped squealing on a branch.
And they laughed because I had .a father with a ribbon in his hair.
I would wake up in shame.
Well, at long last.
On a certain ordinary night,
between a humdrum Friday and Saturday,
they suddenly appeared exactly as I wished them.
Seen in a dream, they yet seemed freed from dreams,
obedient only to themselves and nothing else.
All possibilities vanished from the background of the image,
accidents lacked a finished form.
Only they shone with beauty, for they were like themselves.
They appeared to me a long, long time, and happily.
I woke up. I opened my eyes.
I touched the world as if it were a carved frame.
The little girl I was -
I knew her, naturally.
I have a frw photos
from her brief life.
I feel a mirthful pity
for several little verses.
I remember a few events.
Yet
to make the man who's now with me
laugh and put his arms around me,
I recall only one small story:
the puppy love
of that plain little thing.
I tell
of her love for a student,
that is, how she wanted
him to look at her.
I tell
how she ran to meet him,
a bandage around her unhurt head,
so he'd at least - oh! - ask
what had happened.
A funny little girl.
How could she have known
that even despair yields profit
if by some good fortune
one should live a little longer.
I would give her money for a sweet.
I would give her money for a movie.
Off with you now, I'm busy.
But can't you see
the light is out.
Can't vou understand
the door is closed.
Don't pull at the knob -
the man who laughed,
who put his arms around me,
is not that student of yours.
You'd better go back
where you came from.
I owe you nothing,
I'm an average woman
who only knows
when
to betray another's secret.
Don't look at us like that
with those eyes of yours
open much too wide
like the eyes of the dead.
I owe a great deal
to those I do not love.
The relief with which I accept
they are dearer to someone else.
The joy that it is not I
who am wolf to their sheep.
Peace unto me with them,
and freedom with them unto me,
and that is something that love cannot give
or contrive to take away.
I do not wait for them
from window to door.
Patient
almost like a sundial,
I understand
what love does not understand,
I forgive
what love would never forgive.
From meeting to letter
passes not an eternity
but merely a few days or weeks.
Travels with them are always a success,
concerts heard,
cathedrals visited,
landscapes in sharp focus.
And when we are separated
by seven mountains and rivers,
they are mountains and rivers
well known from the map.
It is thanks to them
that I live in three dimensions,
in a space non-lyrical and non-rhetorical,
with a horizon real because movable.
They themselves do not know
how much they bring in empty hands.
"I owe them nothing,"
love would say
on this open question.
Die - you can't do that to a cat.
Since what can a can do
in an empty apartment ?
Climb the walls ?
Rub up against the furniture ?
Nothing seems different here,
but nothing is the same.
Nothing has been moved,
but there's more space.
And at nighttime no lamps are lit.
Footsteps on the staircase,
but they're new ones.
The hand that puts fish on the saucer
has changed, too.
Somethig doesn't start
at its usual time.
Something doesnt happen
as it should.
Someone was always, always here,
then suddenly disappered
and stubbornly stays disappered.
Every closet has been examined.
Every shelf has been explored.
Excavations under the carpet turned up nothing.
A commancdment was even broken:
papers scattered everywhere.
What remains to be done.
Just sleep and wait.
Just wait till he turns up,
just let him show his face.
Will he ever get a lesson
on what not to do to a cat.
Sidle toward him
as if unwilling
and ever so slow
on visibly offended paws,
and no leaps or squeals at least to start.