v
Hold a world. A cigarette, a glass, lips,
Now, for a moment don’t hold. Let go. Let them expand
without placing the green on the leaves or on
that boyish body, stooping over a notebook).
to be not “leaves” at all, nor “a cigarette”, “a glass”
like a sea on a shore. When they’re already like this, inside you,
off-on, and again. Now
a thing of the things. Peek at it sailing in the expanse
from what you are. All this is nothing but
we’ll continue to say nothing to anyone who asks --
here, we created this outside. This orange
quivers between us, between there-is and there-isn’t, between
vi
You say: to be penetrated, to penetrate. Sandsea, seasand,
You are not being paid for this, and still,
you’re only a name and you have no navel. I
which you repeat. Tell me, reflection --
I say seasand, sandsea. Like something
that’s “there”. So enough. Come back to me. I’ll let you go
Now there’s no longer a difference between us, except this poem
and not really different: here, you don’t go at all
a mirror and turn its pages in front of what has already been
the anger, the insult, the longing that sucks blue from your chest,
it’s a voice that accompanies what my gaze now
I see world by world, now by now, one
to page, you peek and flicker between letter and letter
and don’t stop coming, and not really coming. So enough, please,
Here, I sit on a bench in the park and bask in the sun.
only asks to return to the beginning, to the first performance,
Then -- you remember -- we cried from the light, and the world was the centre,
faltering explanations, poems maddened by a repetitive yearning,
that didn’t solve a thing. People tired quickly, and hastened to those who
they believed in habit without thinking about it, wore it
shook their hands (“hello”), we looked at one another
the same thing more or less, though in them time was different, full of teeth,
There were things without time at all: squares on a dress in the wind,
purple briar buttons, an electric wire cutting
or a hiding place among tall grass --
ignore it by simple means, as with a countenance “how are you”
and thus exists. Along a path that hasn’t been weeded the house turns
and “we’ve seen it before” fills up the sights with hallucinations,
passes through dunghills of images of existence, and out of them
toward you in a thinning howl: see me, see me and believe in me,
and be redeemed. I cry with them out of stupidity, cry
number?
they greet your other faces hungrier; you shut
a fridge, a bottle, a T.V. But despite everything
and hop into the screen. You shut your eyes and let go. Let them do to you.
curtain by curtain), a forest of eyes, sounds and your-body in front of you
beyond itself. You go down to the river on stone stairs,
splash water on a buffalo until it yields to immerse. A hawk dives into
by a fisherman; outside a parked car’s alarm goes up and down.
and drag your feet to the shower, like a recurring dream. Good morning,
from the mirror to the towel, that brings you back further
begin to use a palate, a tongue, a throat, lips, and extricate from there
the weight of your limbs on the chair’s plank, my face, your face,
autumn leaves on the sidewalk, a lunch bag, warm smell
and fingers that cover you before the day is turned off.
and populate what’s inside you, without being so much a world,
the memory of a palm tree, at the sea shore (near
Let the leaves mix with the sidewalk, to repose,
“lips”. To expand in you like excitement,
turn them off, and on again. Turn off, turn on,
do the same thing with the world in which you are “you”,
of a body, turn-off-turn-on-turn-off and see
a parable’s moral. We will continue flickering, and in a binary rhythm
I, you, etc. And why not, let’s create a new parable:
on the blue, the “ insult”, the “hope”, what
this and that. Let’s call it.
Hand on hand. (What broke out - touches)
the verges of the middle. Words fall between us
like something broken. Listen, I love you.
But you, having it only your way, exist, exist, exist.
Mr. Other and Mrs., you stroll on the street, as if
act like you, repeat the movements
I hurl another stone at you -- is there anyone more actual than me?
broken: a myriad of faces, legs and hands, like something
as often as you like.
where a bit of a world resides. There’s also another possibility,
you don’t stop coming for a moment. I open
written above: the sadness that you are, sad in front of the blue of evening sky,
or happiness that suddenly spills in front of the blue of that evening sky,
sees or doesn’t see. And also you --
and yet another one. In this poem, that stumbles from page
and vanish-present in all the centimeters, that ostensibly only keep silent here --
don’t hide everywhere, talk to me all at once.
What touches, has a face
vii
And next to me, as in a park, an old lady is sitting. The body
that you have already seen over and over again in lesser versions.
like an underground central train station. Afterwards were only
misunderstood apologies, and letters
had already trusted in their existence. Like me and you
like a snake’s skin, every morning. I asked how they were,
from above or below in the same pain. In the books was written
biting the back of this time, that in a world wore the world.
skin under fingers or sun, a wound that healed and disappeared,
the window in two, the fluttering of a curtain in the morning,
those things taught me something else, that everyone knows. You can
“son of a bitch”, “I deem that” etc.; but time is pursued,
into a back yard, into balding grass and a bra on a line,
that earlier were called a dream. The way out of the house
countless arms of face-beggars extend
I’m your son that you loved, take me to you, take --
and don’t look back, don’t look back. At night –
the dictionary in which “life” is only plural,* open a book,
they’re here -- they come out of the freezer like a genie from a bottle
And already the stage lights, a curtain rises fold by fold (or rather
that appears from nowhere, rolls from inside the stomach, and leaves you no I
strip naked, still dancing. Two brownish youths
a reflection of a banyan tree, inside the net that was laid here, so it seems,
You extricate yourself from the blanket, still full of eyes, you gather your body
I say, and take you out slowly slowly
into this body, and dresses you with a face. You
a hoarse sound that tests the air: “I --”
* the word “life” in Hebrew is plural, “life” and “lives” are distinguished only by context.