Instead of the return of memories
at the hour of death
I order up the return
of lost objects.
Through the windows, the doors - umbrellas,
a suitcase, gloves, a coat,
so I can say:
What use is all that to me?
Safety pins, this comb or that,
a paper rose, a string, a knife,
so I can say:
I have no regrets about anything.
Wherever you may be, key,
try to arrive on time,
so I can say:
It's all rust, my dear friend, rust.
A cloud of certificates will descend,
of passes and questionnaires,
so I can say:
The sun is setting.
o watch, swim out of the river,
let me take you in my hand,
so I can say:
Don't still pretend to indicate the hour.
The toy balloon torn loose by the wind
will also reappear,
so I can say:
There are no children here.
They were or they weren't.
On an island or not.
An ocean or not an ocean
swallowed them up or it didn't.
Was there anyone to love anyone?
Did anybody have someone to fight?
Everything happened or it didn't
there or someplace else.
Seven cities stood there.
So we think.
They were meant to stand forever.
We suppose.
They weren't up to much, no.
They were up to something, yes.
Hypothetical. Dubious.
Uncommemorated.
Never extracted from air,
fire, water, or earth.
Not contained within a stone
or drop of rain.
Not suitable for straightfaced use
as a story's moral.
A meteor fell.
Not a meteor.
A volcano exploded.
Not a volcano.
Someone summoned something.
Nothing was called.
On this more-or-less Atlantis.
Nothing can ever happen twice.
In consequence, the sorry fact is
that we arrive here improvised
and leave without the chance to practice.
Even if there is no one dumber,
if you're the planet's biggest dunce,
you can't repeat the class in summer:
this course is only offered once.
No day copies yesterday,
no two nights will teach what bliss is
in precisely the same way,
with exactly the same kisses.
One day, perhaps, some idle tongue
mentions your name by accident:
I feel as if a rose were flung
into the room, all hue and scent.
The next day, though you're here with me,
I can't help looking at the clock:
A rose? A rose? What could that be?
Is it a flower or a rock?
Why do we treat the fleeting day
with so much needless fear and sorrow?
It's in its nature not to stav:
Today is always gone tomorrow.
With smiles and kisses, we prefer
to seek accord beneath our star,
although we're different (we concur)
just as two drops of water are.
Here are plates but no appetite.
And wedding rings, but the requited love
has been gone now for some three hundred years.
Here's a fan - where is the maiden's blush?
Here are swords where is the ire?
Nor will the lute sound at the twilight hour.
Since eternity was out of stock,
ten thousand aging things have been amassed instead.
The moss-grown guard in golden slumber
props his moustache on the Exhibit Number...
Fight. Metals, clay and feathers celebrate
their silent triumphs over dates.
Only some Egyptian flapper's silly hairpin giggles.
The crown has outlasted the head.
The hand has lost out to the glove.
The right shoe has defeated the foot.
As for me, I am still alive, you see.
The battle with my dress still rages on.
It struggles, foolish thing, so stubbornly!
Determined to keep living when I'm gone!
Little girls -
skinny, resigned
to freckles that won't go away,
not turning any heads
as they walk across the eyelids of the world,
looking just like Mom or Dad,
and sincerely horrified by it -
in the middle of dinner,
in the middle of a book,
while studying the mirror,
may suddenly be taken off to Troy.
In the grand boudoir of a wink
they all turn into beautiful Helens.
They ascend the royal staircase
in the rustling of silk and admiration.
They feel light. They all know
that beauty equals rest,
that lips mould the speech's meaning,
and gestures sculpt themselves
in inspired nonchalance.
Their small faces
worth dismissing envoys for
extend proudly on necks
that merit countless sieges.
Those tall, dark movie stars,
their girlfriends' older brothers,
Everything's mine but just on loan,
nothing for the memory to hold,
though mine as long as I look.
Memories come to mind like excavated statues
that have misplaced their heads.
From the town of Samokov, only rain
and more rain.
Paris from Louvre to fingernail
grows web-eyed by the moment.
Boulevard Saint-Martin: some stairs
leading into a fadeout.
Only a bridge and a half
from Leningrad of the bridges.
Poor Uppsala, reduced to a splinter
of its mighty cathedral.
Sofia's hapless dancer,
a form without a face.
Then separately, his face without eyes;
separately again, eyes with no pupils,
and, finally, the pupils of a cat.
A Caucasian eagle soars
above a reproduction of a canyon,
the fool's gold of the sun,
the phony stones.
Everything's mine but just on loan,
nothing for the memory to hold,
though mine as long as I look.
Inexhaustible, unembraceable,
but particular to the smallest fiber,
grain of sand, drop of water -
landscapes.
I won't retain one blade of grass
as it's truly seen.
Salutation and farewell
in a single glance.
For surplus and absence alike,
a single motion of the neck.
We treat each other with exceeding courtesy;
we say, it's great to see you after all these years.
Our tigers drink milk.
Our hawks tread the ground.
Our sharks have all drowned.
Our wolves yawn beyond the open cage.
Our snakes have shed their lightning,
our apes their flights of fancy,
our peacocks have renounced their plumes.
The bats flew out of our hair long ago.
We fall silent in mid-sentence,
all smiles, past help.
Our humans
don't know how to talk to one another.
Titanettes, female fauna,
naked as the rumbling of barrels.
They roost in trampled beds,
asleep, with mouths agape, ready to crow.
Their pupils have fled into flesh
and sound the glandular depths
from which yeast seeps into their blood.
Daughters of the Baroque. Dough
thickens in troughs, baths steam, wines blush,
cloudy piglets careen across the sky,
triumphant trumpets neigh the carnal alarm.
O pumpkin plump! 0 pumped-up corpulence
inflated double by disrobing
and tripled by your tumultuous poses!
O fatty dishes of love!
Their skinny sisters woke up earlier,
before dawn broke and shone upon the painting.
And no one saw how they went single file
along the canvas's unpainted side.
Exiled by style. Only their ribs stood out.
With birdlike feet and palms, they strove
to take wing on their jutting shoulder blades.
The thirteenth century would have given them
golden haloes.
The twentieth, silver screens.
The seventeenth, alas, holds nothing for the unvoluptuous.
For even the sky bulges here
with pudgy angels and a chubby god -
thick-whiskered Phoebus, on a sweaty steed,
riding straight into the seething bedchamber.
Poised beneath a twig-wigged tree,
she spills her sparkling vocal powder:
slippery sound slivers, silvery
like spider's spittle, only louder.
Oh yes, she Cares (with a high C)
for Fellow Humans (you and me);
for us she'll twitter nothing bitter;
she'll knit her fitter, sweeter glitter;
her vocal chords mince words for us
and crumble croutons, with crisp crunch
(lunch for her little lambs to munch)
into a cream-filled demitasse.
But hark! It's dark! Oh doom too soon!
She's threatened by the black bassoon!
It's hoarse and coarse, it's grim and gruff,
it calls her dainty voice's bluff -
Basso Profondo, end this terror,
do-re-mi mene tekel et cetera!
You want to silence her, abduct her
to our chilly life behind the scenes?
To our Siberian steppes of stopped-up sinuses,
frogs in all throats, eternal hems and haws,
where we, poor souls, gape soundlessly
like fish? And this is what you wish?
Oh nay! Oh nay! Though doom be nigh,
she'll keep her chin and pitch up high!
Her fate is hanging by a hair
of voice so thin it sounds like air,
but that's enough for her to take
a breath and soar, without a break,
chandelierward; and while she's there,
her vox humana crystal-clears
the whole world up. And we're all ears.
From scalp to sole, all muscles in slow motion.
The ocean of his torso drips with lotion.
The king of all is he who preens and wrestles
with sinews twisted into monstrous pretzels.
Onstage, he grapples with a grizzly bear
the deadlier for not really being there.
Three unseen panthers are in turn laid low,
each with one smoothly choreographed blow.
He grunts while showing his poses and paces.
His back alone has twenty different faces.
The mammoth fist he raises as he wins
is tribute to the force of vitamins.
To be a boxer, or not to be there
at all. 0 Muse, where are our teeming crowds?
Twelve people in the room, eight seats to spare -
it's time to start this cultural affair.
Half came inside because it started raining,
the rest are relatives. O Muse.
The women here would love to rant and rave,
but that's for boxing. Here they must behave.
Dante's Inferno is ringside nowadays.
Likewise his Paradise. O Muse.
Oh, not to be a boxer but a poet,
one sentenced to hard shelleying for life,
for lack of muscles forced to show the world
the sonnet that may make the highschool reading lists
with luck. O Muse,
O bobtailed angel, Pegasus.
In the first row, a sweet old man's soft snore:
he dreams his wife's alive again. What's more,
she's making him that tart she used to bake.
Aflame, but carefully - don't burn his cake! -
we start to read. O Muse.
Here lies, oldfashioned as parentheses,
the authoress of verse. Eternal rest
was granted her by earth, although the corpse
had failed to join the avant-garde, of course.
The plain grave? There's poetic justice in it,
this ditty-dirge, the owl, the meek cornflower
Passerby, take your PC out, press "POWER",
think on Szymborska's fate for half a minute.
"What time is it?" "Oh yes, I'm
so happy;
all I need is a little bell round my neck
to jingle over you while you're asleep."
"Didn't you hear the storm? The north wind shook
the walls; the tower gate, like a lion's maw,
yawned on its creaking hinges." "How could you
forget? I had on that plain gray dress
that fastens on the shoulder." "At that moment,
myriad exploswns shook the sky." "How could I
come in? You weren't alone, affer all." "I glimpsed
colors older than sight itself" "Too bad
you can't promise me." "You're right, it must have been
a dream." "Why all these lies; why do you call me
by her name; do you still love her?" "Of course,
I want you to stay with me." "I can't
complain. I should have guessed myself."
"Do you still think about him?" "But I'm not
crying."
"That's all there is?" "No one but you."
"At least you're honest." "Don't worry,
I'm leaving town." "Don't worry,
I'm going." "You have such beautiful hands."
"That's ancient historv; the blade went through,
but missed the bone." "Never mind, darling,
never mind." "I don't know
what time it is, and I don't care.
A drop of water fell on my hand,
drawn from the Ganges and the Nile,
from hoarfrost ascended to heaven off a seal's
whiskers,
from jugs broken in the cities of Ys and Tyre.
On my index finger
the Caspian Sea isn't landlocked,
and the Pacific is the Rudawa's meek tributary,
the same stream that floated in a little cloud over Paris
in the year seven hundred and sixty-four
on the seventh of May at three a. m.
There are not enough mouths to utter
all your fleeting names, O water.
I would have to name you in every tongue,
pronouncing all the vowels at once
while also keeping silent - for the sake of the
lake
that still goes unnamed
and doesn't exist on this earth, just as the
star
reflected in it is not in the sky.
Someone was drowning, someone dying was
calling out for you. Long ago, yesterday.
You have saved houses from fire, you have
carried off
houses and trees, forests and towns alike.
You've been in christening fonts and
courtesans' baths.
In coffins and kisses.
Gnawing at stone, feeding rainbows.
In the sweat and the dew of pyramids and lilacs.
How light the raindrop's contents are.
How gently the world touches me.
Whenever wherever whatever has happened
is written on waters of Babel.
In Heraclitus' river
a fish is busy fishing,
a fish guts a fish with a sharp fish,
a fish builds a fish, a fish lives in a fish,
a fish escapes from a fish under siege.
In Heraclitus' river
a fish loves a fish,
your eyes, it says, glow like the fishes in the sky,
I would swim at your side to the sea we will share,
oh fairest of the shoal.
In Heraclitus' river
a fish has imagined the fish of all fish,
a fish kneels to the fish, a fish sings to the fish,
a fish begs the fish to ease its fishy lot.
In Heraclitus' river
I, the solitary fish, a fish apart
(apart at least from the tree fish and the stone fish),
write, at isolated moments, a tiny fish or two
whose glittering scales, so fleeting,
may only be the dark's embarrassed wink.
Why does this written doe bound through these
written woods?
For a drink of written water from a spring
whose surface will xerox her soft muzzle?
Why does she lift her head; does she hear something?
Perched on four slim legs borrowed from the truth,
she pricks up her ears beneath my fingertips.
Silence - this word also rustles across the page
and parts the boughs
that have sprouted from the word "woods."
Lying in wait, set to pounce on the blank page,
are letters up to no good,
clutches of clauses so subordinate
they'll never let her get away.
Each drop of ink contains a fair supply
of hunters, equipped with squinting eyes behind their sights,
prepared to swarm the sloping pen at any moment,
surround the doe, and slowly aim their guns.
They forget that what's here isn't life.
Other laws, black on white, obtain.
The twinkling of an eye will take as long as I say,
and will, if I wish, divide into tiny eternities,
full of bullets stopped in mid-flight.
Not a thing will ever happen unless I say so.
Without my blessing, not a leaf will fall,
not a blade of grass will bend beneath that little hoof's full
stop.
Is there then a world
where I rule absolutely on fate?
A time I bind with chains of signs?
An existence become endless at my bidding?
The joy of writing.
The power of preserving.
Revenge of a mortal hand.
My nonarrival in the city of N.
took place on the dot.
You'd been alerted
in my unmailed letter.
You were able not to be there
at the agreed-upon time.
The train pulled up at Platform 3.
A lot of people got out.
My absence joined the throng
as it made its way toward the exit.
Several women rushed
to take my place
in all that rush.
Somebody ran up to one of them.
I didn't know him,
but she recognized him
immediately.
While they kissed
with not our lips,
a suitcase disappeared,
not mine.
The railroad station in the city of N.
passed its exam
in objective existence
with flying colors.
The whole remained in place.
Particulars scurried
along the designated tracks.
Even a rendezvous
took place as planned.
Beyond the reach
of our presence.
In the paradise lost
of probability.
Somewhere else.
Somewhere else.
How these little words ring.
So this is his mother.
This small woman.
The gray-eyed procreator.
The boat in which, years ago,
he sailed to shore.
The boat from which he stepped
into the world,
into un-eternity.
Genetrix of the man
with whom I leap through fire.
So this is she, the only one
who didn't take him
finished and complete.
She herself puHed him
into the skin I know,
bound him to the bones
that are hidden from me.
She herself raised
the gray eyes
that he raised to me.
So this is she, his Alpha.
Why has he shown her to me.
Born.
So he was born, too.
Born like everyone else.
Like me, who will die.
The son of an actual woman.
A new arrival from the body's depths.
A voyager to Omega.
Subject to
his own absence,
on every front,
at any moment.
He hits his head
against a wall
that won't give way forever.
His movements
dodge and parry
the universal verdict.
I realized
that his journey was already halfway over.
But he didn't tell me that,
no.
"This is my mother,"
was all he said.
On the hill where Troy once stood,
they've dug up seven cities.
Seven cities. Six too many
for a single epic.
What's to be done with them? What?
Hexameters burst,
nonfictional bricks appear between the cracks,
ruined walls rise mutely as in silent films,
charred beams, broken chains,
bottomless pitchers drained dry,
fertility charms, olive pits
and skulls as palpable as tomorrow's moon.
Our stockpile of antiquity grows constantly,
it's overflowing,
reckless squatters jostle for a place in history,
hordes of sword fodder,
Hector's nameless extras, no less brave than he,
thousands upon thousands of singular faces,
each the first and last for all time,
in each a pair of inimitable eyes.
How easy it was to live not knowing this,
so sentimental, so spacious.
What should we give them? What do they need?
Some more or less unpeopled century?
Some small appreciation for their goldsmiths' art?
We three billion judges
have problems of our own,
our own inarticulate rabble,
railroad stations, bleachers, protests and processions,
vast numbers of remote streets, floors, and walls.
We pass each other once for all time in department stores
shopping for a new pitcher.
Homer is working in the census bureau.
No one knows what he does in his spare time.
Here I am, Cassandra.
And this is my city under ashes.
And these are my prophet's staff and ribbons.
And this is my head full of doubts.
It's true, I am triumphant.
My prophetic words burn like fire in the sky.
Only unacknowledged prophets
are privy to such prospects.
Only those who got off on the wrong foot,
whose predictions turned to fact so quickly
it's as if they'd never lived.
I remember it so clearly -
how people, seeing me, would break off in mid-word.
Laughter died.
Lovers' hands unclasped.
Children ran to their mothers.
I didn't even know their short-lived names.
And that song about a little green leaf -
no one ever finished it near me.
I loved them.
But I loved them haughtily.
From heights beyond life.
From the future. Where it's always empty
and nothing is easier than seeing death.
I'm sorry that my voice was hard.
Look down on yourselves from the stars, I cried,
look down on yourselves from the stars.
They heard me and lowered their eyes.
They lived within life.
Pierced by that great wind.
Condemned.
Trapped from birth in departing bodies.
But in them they bore a moist hope,
a flame fuelled by its own flickering.
They reaHy knew what a moment means,
oh any moment, any one at all
before
It turns out I was right.
But nothing has come of it.
And this is my robe, slightly singed.
And this is my prophet's junk.
And this is my twisted face.
A face that didn't know it could be beautiful.
"O Theotropia, my empress consort."
"O Theodendron, my consort emperor."
"How fair thou art, my hollow-cheeked
beloved."
"How fine art thou, blue-lipped
spouse."
"Thou art so wondrous frail
beneath thy bell-like gown,
the alarum of which, if but removed,
would waken all my kingdom."
"How excellently mortified thou art,
my lord and master,
to mine own shadow a twinned shade."
"Oh how it pleaseth me
to see my lady's palms,
like unto palm leaves verily,
clasped to her mantle's throat."
"Wherewith, raised heavenward,
I would pray thee mercy for our son,
for he is not such as we, 0 Theodendron."
"Heaven forfend, 0 Theotropia.
Pray, what might he be,
begotten and brought forth
in godly dignity?"
"I will confess anon, and thou shalt hear
me.
Not a princeling but a sinner have I borne thee.
Pink and shameless as a piglet,
plump and merry, verily,
all chubby wrists and ringlets came he
rolling unto us."
"He is roly-poly?"
"That he is."
"He is voracious?"
"Yea, in truth."
"His skin is milk and roses?"
"As thou sayest."
"What, pray, does our archimandrite say,
a man of most penetrating gnosis?
What say our consecrated eremites,
most holy skeletesses?
How should they strip the fiendish infant
of his swad~ing silks?"
"Metamorphosis miraculous
still lies within our Savior's power.
Yet thou, on spying
the babe's unsightliness,
shalt not cry out
and rouse the sleeping demon from his rest?"
"I am thy twin in horror.
Lead on, Theotropia."
Decolletage comes from decollo,
decollo means I cut off at the neck.
The Queen of Scots, Mary Stuart,
ascended the scaffold in an appropriate shift.
The shift was decollere
and red as a hemorrhage.
At that very moment,
in a secluded chamber,
Elizabeth Tudor, Queen of England,
stood at the window in a white dress.
The dress was triumphantly fastened to the chin
and finished in a starched ruff.
They thought in unison:
"Lord, have mercy on me"
"Right is on my side"
"Living means getting in the way"
"Under certain circumstances the owl is the baker's
daughter"
"This will never end"
"It is already over"
"What am I doing here, there's nothing here"
The difference in dress - yes, this we know for
sure.
The detail
is unyielding.
We're extremely fortunate
not to know precisely
the kind of world we live in.
One would have
to live a long, long time,
unquestionably longer
than the world itself.
Get to know other worlds,
if only for comparison.
Rise above the flesh,
which only really knows
how to obstruct
and make trouble.
For the sake of research,
the big picture
and definitive conclusions,
one would have to transcend time,
in which everything scurries and whirls.
From that perspective,
one might as well bid farewell
to incidents and details.
The counting of weekdays
would inevitably seem to be
a senseless activity;
dropping letters in the mailbox
a whim of foolish youth;
the sign "No Walking On The Grass"
a symptom of lunacy.