Breathturn into Timestead (20 page)

 

 

M
Y

soul, youward creasebent,

hears you

a-thundering,

in your neck hollows my

star learns how one sags away

and becomes true,

I finger it forth again—

come, confer with it,

this very day.

 

 

A
STAR

listens to a light,

an hour repudiates

an hour,

heartheavy

azure rolls

over you,

your bloody

saliva

delights

an obsessed dustmote,

a motherstump

leads an earlyface

through a pain,

its god,

mowing, paces off the imagefront,

on the ridges

of the upper

cradle.

 

 

L
ITTLE ROOTDREAMINGS
that keep me here,

bloodwashedout,

no longer visible for anyone,

death's possession,

you, camber a forehead

that a speech may go, of earth,

of fervor, of

eyenesses, here

too, where you read me off the blinddial,

here

too,

where you revoke me

so thoroughly.

 

 

II

A
LMONDING
YOU
, who only halfspoke,

yet was trembled from the seed on up,

you

I let wait,

you.

And was

not yet

uneyed,

as yet unthorned in the song's

constellation, the song that begins:

Hachnisini.

 

 

I
T STOOD

on your lip: the figsplinter

it stood

around us: Jerusalem

it stood

above the Daneship:

the bright pinescent, we thanked it,

I stood

in you.

 

 

T
HE SWELTER

adds us up

in the ass's bray before

Absalom's tomb, here too,

Gethsemane, over there,

bypassed, whom

does it bury?

At the nearest gate nothing opens,

above you, open one, I carry you toward me.

 

 

W
E WHO LIKE THE SEA OATS GUARD
,

in Neve Avivim,

the unkissed

stone of a complaint

swells up,

before fulfillment,

it palpates our mouths,

it crosses

over to us,

alloyed to us

in its Whiteness,

we hand ourselves on:

to you and to me,

night, be careful, the sand-

commanded

is strict

with us two.

 

 

A
RING, FOR BOWDRAWING
,

loosed after the wordswarm

that founders behind the world,

with the starlings,

arrowy one, when you whir toward me,

I know from where,

I forget from where.

 

 

T
HE RADIANCE
, yes, the one that

Abu Tor

saw riding toward us, when we

orphaned into each other, for life,

not only up from the wrists —:

a goldbuoy, from

temple-depths,

surveyed the danger that

slyly underlay us.

 

 

Y
OU, NITID

daughtertumor

of a cosmic glare,

seized

by supracelestial search troops

shunted

into the seeing, god-

waiving

starheap Blue,

you turn gamy

before our

hungry, immovable

pores,

a co-sun, twixt

two brightshots

abyss.

 

 

C
OME
, lay out the world with yourself,

come, let me fill you all up with

all that's mine,

one with you I am,

to capture us,

even now.

 

 

A
BOOTFUL
of brain

set out in the rain:

there will be a going, a great one,

far across the borders

they draw for us.

 

 

T
HE TRUMPET'S PART

deep in the glowing

Empty-text,

at torch's level,

in the timehole:

listen your way in

with the mouth.

 

 

T
HE POLES

are in us,

insurmountable

while awake,

we sleep across, to the Gate

of Mercy,

I lose you to you, that

is my snowcomfort,

say that Jerusalem
is
,

say it, as if I was this

your Whiteness

as if you were

mine,

as if without us we could be we,

I leaf you open, forever,

you pray, you lay

us free.

 

 

T
HE KINGSWAY
behind the pretend-door,

before it, deathed

in by the counter-

sign, the lionsign,

the constellation, keel up,

mired in,

you, with the

wound-fathoming

eyelash.

 

 

T
HERE ALSO
comes a meaning

down the narrower cut,

it is breached

by the deadliest of our

standing marks.

 

 

I
DRINK WINE
from two glasses

and harrow

the king's caesura

like that other

does Pindar,

God turns in the tuning fork

as one of the small

just ones,

from the lottery drum falls

our doit.

 

 

S
OMETHING SHALL BE
, later,

that fills itself with you

and lifts itself

to a mouth

Out of shattered

madness

I raise myself

and watch my hand

as it draws the one

single

circle

 

 

N
OTHINGNESS
, for the sake

of our names

—they gather us in—

seals,

the end believes us

the beginning,

before the

masters en-

silencing us,

in the undifferentiated, attesting

itself: the clammy

brightness.

 

 

I
N THE BELLSHAPE
the

believing-unbelieving

souls gasp,

star-nonsense

propagates itself, even with my

hand, in desert-sense en-

duned by you,

we got here

long ago.

 

 

A
S
I
carry the ringshadow

you carry the ring,

something, used to heaviness,

strains itself

lifting us,

infinite

de-ternalizing you.

 

 

S
TRANGENESS

has netted us,

transience reaches

perplexedly through us,

take my pulse, it too,

into yourself,

then we shall prevail

against you, against me,

something enclothes us

in dayskin, in nightskin,

for the game with the highest, epi-

leptic seriousness.

 

 

I
LLUMINATED
, the seeds

which I in you

won swimming,

rowed free,

the names—they

sail the straits,

a blessing, up front,

compacts into

a weathersensing

fist.

 

 

III

S
ALVED AWAY
, outside, in the stone-

crop,

by singing

hands,

half the scabious,

thrifty,

before the eardrum rupture,

under the left

foot

a window—of

earth?

 

 

P
LACE CHANGE
by the substances:

you go to yourself, join up,

by missing

earthlight,

I hear, we were

a heavensgrowth,

that remains to be shown, from

above, along

our roots,

there's two suns, you hear,

two,

not one—

so what?

 

 

T
HE WORLD
, world,

just in all its farts,

I, I

with you, you, shaved

bald.

 

 

W
HAT BITTERS

herein?

The great alonenesses

dwarfing

in the auditory cortex-hymn,

blessedly

the thumbscrews whisper in

sanguine

rack-torture-height,

the determining

pauses

are granted

access,

in the counting chamber,

rebellious,

the rings worship

the rest.

 

 

T
HE LOWERED

godthumbs, in bark-

shirt I haul in the

lowest treecreepers, soon it will be

today, forever, the

markings, the

radiationbrood,

come a-

dancing across the antimatter,

toward you,

into the comet-

conservatory.

 

 

C
ROCUS
, from the hospitable

table seen:

sign-sensing

little exile

of a shared

truth,

you need

each stalk.

 

 

V
INEGROWERS
dig up dig

under the darkhoured watch,

depth for depth,

you read,

the invisible

one commands the wind

to stay in bounds,

you read,

the Open Ones carry

the stone behind the eye,

it recognizes you,

on a Sabbath.

Atemwende

I

D
U DARFST
mich getrost

mit Schnee bewirten:

sooft ich Schulter an Schulter

mit dem Maulbeerbaum schritt durch den Sommer,

schrie sein jüngstes

Blatt.

 

 

V
ON
U
NGETRÄUMTEM
geätzt,

wirft das schlaflos durchwanderte Brotland

den Lebensberg auf.

Aus seiner Krume

knetest du neu unsre Namen,

die ich, ein deinem

gleichendes

Aug an jedem der Finger,

abtaste nach

einer Stelle, durch die ich

mich zu dir heranwachen kann,

die helle

Hungerkerze im Mund.

 

 

I
N DIE
R
ILLEN

der Himmelsmünze im Türspalt

preßt du das Wort,

dem ich entrollte,

als ich mit bebenden Fäusten

das Dach über uns

abtrug, Schiefer um Schiefer,

Silbe um Silbe, dem Kupfer-

schimmer der Bettel-

schale dort oben

zulieb.

 

 

I
N DEN
F
LÜSSEN
nördlich der Zukunft

werf ich das Netz aus, das du

zögernd beschwerst

mit von Steinen geschriebenen

Schatten.

 

 

V
OR DEIN SPÄTES
G
ESICHT

allein-

gängerisch zwischen

auch mich verwandelnden Nächten,

kam etwas zu stehn,

das schon einmal bei uns war, un-

berührt von Gedanken.

 

 

D
IE
S
CHWERMUTSSCHNELLEN HINDURCH
,

am blanken

Wundenspiegel vorbei:

da werden die vierzig

entrindeten Lebensbäume geflößt.

Einzige Gegen-

schwimmerin, du

zählst sie, berührst sie

alle.

 

 

D
IE
Z
AHLEN
, im Bund

mit der Bilder Verhängnis

und Gegen-

verhängnis.

Der drübergestülpte

Schädel, an dessen

schlafloser Schläfe ein irr-

lichternder Hammer

all das im Welttakt

besingt.

 

 

W
EGE IM
S
CHATTEN-
G
EBRÄCH

deiner Hand.

Aus der Vier-Finger-Furche

wühl ich mir den

versteinerten Segen.

 

 

W
EISSGRAU
aus-

geschachteten steilen

Gefühls.

Landeinwärts, hierher-

verwehter Strandhafer bläst

Sandmuster über

den Rauch von Brunnengesängen.

Ein Ohr, abgetrennt, lauscht.

Ein Aug, in Streifen geschnitten,

wird all dem gerecht.

 

 

M
IT ERDWÄRTS GESUNGENEN
M
ASTEN

fahren die Himmelwracks.

In dieses Holzlied

beißt du dich fest mit den Zähnen.

Du bist der liedfeste

Wimpel.

 

 

S
CHLÄFENZANGE
,

von deinem Jochbein beäugt.

Ihr Silberglanz da,

wo sie sich festbiß:

du und der Rest deines Schlafs –

bald

habt ihr Geburtstag.

 

 

B
EIM
H
AGELKORN
, im

brandigen Mais-

kolben, daheim,

den späten, den harten