(translated from Hebrew by Helena Berg)
i
This poem will be a poem of another century, not different from this one.
This poem will be securely concealed ... under heaps of words, until
between the last sand grains of the hourglass,
like a ship inside a bottle, it will be seen, this poem:
the poem that will speak of innocence. And common people that ostensibly
were shaped by time, like tardy gods,
will listen to it for no reason that wasn’t there before,
rise their backs like snakes
from the junk, and there won’t be anywhere else
to hurry from, and it won’t have an end
different from its beginning. It won’t be rich
and won’t be poor. It won’t bother anymore to promise
and keep or carry out its utterances
and won’t scrimp, or sail there from here.
This poem, if it will speak to you, woman, it won’t call you
muse-babe, and won’t lie with you like its fathers;
or if to you, man, it won’t kneel or kill, won’t apply makeup
and won’t take off its words and flesh, as it has not ... has not --
what. Maybe now I’ll call it here, the bad poem
of the century: here, sick with health ... it barely walks
drags its legs in the viscous current ... of thoughts of the time
or is stopped to show papers and to have its trivia counted
with arithmetical beads. The inventory: flowers and staples,
corpses (yes, no worry), tall glasses. After staples --
also butterflies, and many footprints and other hooks and shelves
for the arguments of scholarly criticism, and also just to fool around, teeth
against teeth, in the anarchic smiles of a chameleon ... that doesn’t know
its colours have long since turned into a parable. Or in incomprehensible tranquillity
to try someone else’s luck in games of
to and fro ... that have no goal other than, let’s say,
a bit of fun the length of a line. Spread orange on the blue
of evening sky: now, plaster a little cloud. Climb
on it, see below: sea of sea, sand of sand.
Or fingers. Ten jointed worms
move in inexplicable charm. Now they encircle
a ball whose circle is faulty, wonderful, fleshy, further more,
you may say a word (it’s a fruit, it’s called
a peach). And these words ... their taste is full of the taste of
its being, of a tone that accompanies the sight with wonder
and not with a thought-slamming sound. And this is the poem:
it sings, let’s say, to the tar that stuck to the foot on the shore,
to plastic bottles, to its own words. It
only sees: black atop white, transparent, or grainy.
It is not less naked than you. Also no more. Only in this exactness
that has no measure, but by the curves of a female-dog,
a pot of cyclamens, or a hair strand on a bathtub railing.
The creatures here don’t want to know. The creatures
there, that only want, are, for now, a possibility
of becoming the creatures that are here, of becoming this antiquity
that has nothing to say other than me, me, without limit
without you. A dog lies on a step in the afternoon
sun, and does not distinguish itself from the flies.
Rain. He’s torn from himself outward
ii
You bite, swallow, actually crack, line by line
in front of this screen, spit the spaces as if they are
a Hungarian sound track. And it’s OK with me, because it’s OK
with you: to reside between the walls, to be covered by them and move
into a fetal rhythm: eat and drink, fill up a gas tank,
order groceries, read poems, sleep. Faster:
an audio-visual commercial slogan, video clips,
a microwave, peeping booths at a porno movie. Faster:
capsules, transfusion, electrodes. Faster:
don’t be born. You are not and you don’t have an existence now
outside this poem. It doesn’t begin, and it doesn’t end
in a page, a line or a comma. This period is a point
that floats in infinite space ... just by distancing a distant gaze. Come closer now
see, there are clouds on it, orange on the blue of evening sky,
sea of sea, sand of sand, and people walking,
sitting, lying, swimming or making love. Choose for yourself
a place and time. Where are you? Now you are in one interior
of a point of view. Perhaps you’d like to be born? Now
is the time that is termed in this here by a number name:
twenty second of the first, one thousand nine-hundred and ninety-five,
twelve thirty, noon, Sunday. And good that you came.
Tomorrow I’ll write the poem in which you’ll reside. Here: this home*
-- solely yours. And its location, size, colours and furniture
as the course of your gaze (refer to the above entry “period”), and also its windows
face a home or homes in the outskirts of the poem, in its navel or above it:
behold its trees pass by, its inhabitants, cafes, and its flying saucers,
cavalry, elephants, parchments, from which the sea has just withdrawn,
they all flicker between there-is and there-isn’t, between a gaze and its reduction,
between to be and me, between “this” and its names, (me
me and more me: a pot of cyclamens, a hair strand on a railing
of a bathtub, etc.). So go out and see: this poem, forsaken
to meaningless murmurs, I and it have nothing but
what is between here and I am. (This is not an ending line, here – I wrote another one). Now –
*the word “home” in Hebrew also means “stanza” in a poem
His inside gropes the things, turns to outsideiii
Come sit down, see: houses return to their places
slowly. The frost is lit on the windowpane. One more day.
Come sit down. Coffee or tea? sugar, milk? That’s the way it is:
hard boiled egg or sunny side up. Yogurt or sour cream. Jam or honey.
This life, impossible with it
and impossible without: morning or evening, you, man or woman,
cold or hot - come sit down. What else is new? The sea and the sand
sink into each other, and there’s no lifesaver, and no one who interrupts,
and I look at you, holding broken boards
and there isn’t even a ship, and the description of the situation is not definite,
and both of us are cut in the same sentence, and carry it further,
each one for himself. Come sit down,
say: one or many. Slavery or freedom. Me
or you. Love or. How could you know. Fear.
Only in absentmindedness, when we don’t have a shore
and no footprints, and there’s a sound to the words ... and there isn’t,
and they mark not the pictures, but what has gaped
between them and is gone, and never was. Come sit down.
Tomato, cucumber, green onion, cream cheese,
slices of kummel bread, margarine, salt.
Even if you’ll say: wait, you are dreaming - even if I’ll check
my place and deeds, what will change?
In fact, I’m sitting in front of the computer now. In fact
I am doing this - from the beginning, everything. In fact
you are now sitting in front of a page, you are hungry to touch the ...
like me. In fact at this very moment, you touch
from inside out, devour the world that doesn’t stop
spilling out from you: orange on the blue of morning sky, frost
burning on the windowpane, cup of tea -- whatever
you chose now and was. So precisely this way,
choose also now: me for example,
one breakfast, one more day. Here.
Tendril gropes / coils / on a groping tendril
iv
Already late to return from here, also dangerous to stop what
we had said and thereupon was, in which are such deeds.
Take what you’ll take. A liqueur glass, a cigarette, a TV,
or any alibi you’d want (if you don’t mind, I
will continue to write: inside of a thigh, texture of lips, one palm
gathering a handful of a convex reality, a nipple in its middle). True,
this poem repeats what is impossible to repeat
and as from a door in a desert, impossible to exit
without meeting it outside. Behold: roads and sidewalks,
airports and seaports, communication satellites. Behold: ±± outer
space from “here”, it’s also in such a poem
another relative point, like any other thing;
and not only it, every “there” is already here: window
gapes toward a window, and memories --
devour the whole room: sea shore, palm trees, her boyish body
is stooped over the notebook, her head inclined and her hair, black, smooth, falls
and covers the universe. Lips, inside of a thigh, breasts
that sprout now, a Japanese nose, buttocks.
The one who said and was this order - has no fear, or at least
has forgetfulness, while each moment his gaze sprouts ... on the sights.
I’ll write it now: I’ll let it disappear word by word
and not be so much; and each line will begin and end
like a landing of a fly ... in a room of mirrors. And anew:
sea of sea, sand of sand. Look and create them,
hold them for a moment between the boundaries that wander,
fix them in letters like an orderly cry
to say what there isn’t, wasn’t, won’t be,
and don’t bother more than that. Now let go. And again --