The Collected Poems (3 page)

the children in our street
—such a torment to cats

the pigeons—a mild gray

in the park there was a statue of the Poet
children rolled their hoops
and their colorful cries
birds sat on his hands
reading his silence

in the summer nights wives
patiently waited for mouths
smelling of familiar tobacco

 

The singer's lips are welded fast
he mouths the night with his eyes
under a horizon's malevolent cast
where the song ends dusk arrives
and sky's shade covers the earth

As pilots snore in stacks of stars
you go hiding papers a silly sheaf
shedding mosaics made of words
Metaphors mock you as you flee
into a spray of righteous bullets

Your vain words are a shadow's echo
and a wind in empty stanzas' rooms
Not for you to hallow fire with song
you wither scattering to no purpose
the languid flowers of pierced hands

 

Blood lives the longest
it surges and craves air

translucence congealing
loosens the pulse's knot

at dusk the mercury column rises
at dawn mold covers the mouth

closer and closer
temples sinking
eyelids subdued

white eyes burn no lights
broken triangle of fingers
breath taken from silence

 

A red cloud of dust
summoned that fire—
the setting of a city
over earth's horizon

just one more wall
one more brick chorale
has to be knocked down
to remove the painful scar
between the eye
and recollection

with milky coffee rustling papers
the morning workers
blew warmth into dawn and rain
resounding in flumes of dead air

with a steel cable
a swollen silence
they fish out the contraband
from space cleared of rubble

a cloud of red dust descends
the desert passing overhead
at the height of razed floors
frameless windows appear

when the last steep slope
is toppled
and brick plainsong falls
nothing will ruin dreams

 

You look at my hands
they are weak—you say—as flowers

you look at my mouth
too small to utter: the world

there's a flame in me that thinks
and a wind for fire and for sails

My hands are impatient
I can
sculpt a friend's
head out of air

I recite a poem I'd like
to translate into Sanskrit
or a pyramid:

when the stars' source dies
we will light up the nights

when wind turns to stone
we will churn up the air

 

My father liked Anatole France
and smoked Macedonian tobacco
with its blue clouds of fragrance
he savored a smile on narrow lips
and back in those far-away times
when he sat leaning over a book
I used to say: father is Sinbad
at times it's bitter for him with us

upon which he set off On a carpet
on the four winds Anxious we ran
after him in atlases but we lost him
In the end he'd come back take off
his odor put his slippers on again
the jangling of keys in his pockets
and days like drops like heavy drops
and time passes changing nothing

one holiday the net curtains down
he stepped through a windowpane
and didn't return I don't know if he
closed his eyes in grief or never
turned to look at us Once in a foreign
magazine I saw a photograph of him
he is now the governor of an island
where palm trees and liberalism grow

 

He went in a rustle of stone robes
he cast a shadow a glow of laurels

his breaths were light as a statue's
but his movements like a flower's

rapt by the sound of his own song
he raised a lyre to the height of silence

immersed in himself
his pupils white as a stream

stone
from his sandals
to the ribbons in his hair

silence—
   a fissured neck

silence—
   a broken song

I slow diver won't touch
the rock bottom of youth

now I fish out only
salty broken torsos

Apollo appears to me in dreams
with the face of a fallen Persian

poetry's auguries are false
it all happened differently

only an empty pedestal remains—
the trace of a hand seeking a form

 

Through owlish darkness
your eyes

above a pointed helmet
your wisdom

in the empty body
opened by a spear
pour the oil
of gentle radiance

tear from the eyes
the eyelids' scales

let them look

 

O Troy Troy
an archeologist
will stir your ash with his hand
and a fire greater than the Iliad
on seven strings—

two few strings
we need a chorus
a sea of laments
mountains' clamor
a rain of stones

Over the ruins the moon rises
O Troy Troy
The city is silent

The poet grapples with his own shadow
The poet cries like a bird in a wilderness

The moon repeats its landscape
smooth metal smouldering ash

They went down gorges of former streets
as if across a red sea of charred wreckage

and the wind blew up the red dust
faithfully painting the city as it set

They went down gorges of former streets
hungrily breathing into the frozen dawn

and they said: long years will pass
before the first house stands here

they went down gorges of former streets
they thought they would find some trace

 

Good night Marcus put out the light
and shut the book For overhead
is raised a gold alarm of stars
heaven is talking some foreign tongue
this the barbarian cry of fear
your Latin cannot understand
Terror continuous dark terror
against the fragile human land

begins to beat It's winning Hear
its roar The unrelenting stream
of elements will drown your prose
until the world's four walls go down
As for us?—to tremble in the air
blow in the ashes stir the ether
gnaw our fingers seek vain words
drag off the fallen shades behind us

Well Marcus better hang up your peace
give me your hand across the dark
Let it tremble when the blind world beats
on senses five like a failing lyre
Traitors—universe and astronomy
reckoning of stars wisdom of grass
and your greatness too immense
and Marcus my defenseless tears

 

A priest whose deity
descended to earth

In a half-ruined temple
revealed its human face

I impotent priest
who lifting up my hands
know that from this neither rain nor locust
neither harvest nor thunderstorm

 

Sweetness bears a flower's name—

Spherical gardens tremble
suspended over the earth
a sigh turns its head away
a wind's face at the fence
grass is spread out below
the season of anticipation
the coming will snuff out
odors it will open colors

the trees build a cupola
of green tranquillity
the rose is calling you
a blown butterfly pines
after you threads burst
instant follows instant
O rosebud green larva
unfold

Sweetness bears the name: rose
an explosion—
purple's standardbearers
emerge from the interior
and the countless ranks
trumpeters of fragrance
on long butterfly-horns
proclaim the fulfillment

the intricate coronations
cloister gardens orisons
gold-packed ceremonies
and flaming candlesticks
triple towers of silence
light rays broken on high
the depths—

O source of heaven on earth
O constellations of petals

• • •

do not ask what a rose is A bird may render it to you
fragrance kills thought a light brushing erases a face
O color of desire
O color of weeping lids
heavy round sweetness
redness torn to the heart

a rose bows its head
as if it had shoulders

leans against the wind
the wind goes off alone

it cannot speak the word
it cannot speak the word

the more the rose dies
the harder to say: rose

 

Over a light arch—
a brow of stone

on a wall's
untroubled forehead

in the windows joyous and open
with faces instead of geraniums

where there are perfect squares
next to a dreaming perspective

where an ornament wakes a stream
in a tranquil field of level surfaces

motion with stillness a line with a cry
trembling uncertainty simple clarity

I the exile of self-evident forms
proclaim your motionless dance

 

Birds leave behind
shadows in a nest

so leave your lamp
instrument and book

let us go to a hill
where air grows

I will point out
the absent star

tender rootlets
buried by turf

springs of cloud
rising unsullied

a wind lends its mouth
so that we might sing

we'll knit our brows
we won't say a word

clouds have haloes
just like the saints

we have black pebbles
where eyes should be

a good memory cures
the scar a loss leaves

radiance may descend
down our bent backs
verily verily I say unto you
great is the abyss
between us
and the light

 

The cold blue sky like a stone on which angels sublime and quite unearthly sharpen their wings moving on rungs of radiance on crags of shadow they gradually sink into the imaginary heavens but in another moment they emerge even paler on the other side of the sky the other side of the eye Don't say that it's not true that there are no angels you immersed in the pool of your indolent body you who see everything in the color of your eyes and stand sated with world—at your lashes' edge

 

That wall
that last view
do not exist

lime on houses and tombs
lime on memory

the last echo of a salute
shaped into a stone slab
and a concise inscription
chiseled in calm antiqua