The Collected Poems (7 page)

deeper than earth's blood
more luscious than a tree
there is the white stone
an indifferent plenitude

but again eyes shriek
and the stone retreats
it is a sand grain now
sunk under the heart

we swallow images fill a void
the voice struggles with space
ears hands mouth tremble under waterfalls
a ship carrying Indian perfumes
sails into the shell of the nostrils
rainbows bloom from sky to eye

wait white stone
I'll just close my eyes

 

Balconies
eheu
I am not a keeper of sheep
not for me a myrtle grove stream or clouds
I was left balconies an Arcadian in exile
I look out over roofs as over the open sea
where the long plaint of sinking ships rises

what remains for me the wail of mandolins
a brief flight and a fall to the stony depths
to wait among gawkers for the eternal tide
offering up a little blood in return

This is not what I waited for it is not youth
to stand with a bandaged head arms folded
and say you idiot heart you wounded bird
stay here on the cliff in the green enclosure
there's sweet pea and nasturtium blossoms

at dusk a wind comes from the shorn gardens
with dandruff on its collar breeze lame storm
plaster sifts on the deck on the balcony deck
with a bound head a cable end a tuft of hair
I stand in the stony pomp of senile elements

yes clock yes poison it will be the only journey
a journey by ferry to the other bank of the river
there you find no shadow of sea or islands
only the shadows of those whom we loved

yes just a ferry journey just a ferry in the end
O balconies what pain vagrants are singing
down below and a voice joins in their wails
a voice of atonement before the ferry sets off

 

In this room there are three suitcases
a bed not mine
a wardrobe with a mildewed mirror

when I open the door
the furniture freezes
I'm met by a familiar smell
sweat insomnia and sheets

one picture on the wall
represents Vesuvius
with its crest of smoke

I never saw Vesuvius
I don't believe in living volcanoes

the other picture
is a Dutch interior

out of the shadow
a woman's hands
are tipping a jug
from which a braid of milk trickles

on the table a knife a napkin
bread fish a bunch of onions

following a golden light
we come to three steps
the open doors reveal
the square of a garden

the leaves breathe in the light
birds sustain the day's sweetness
an untrue world
warm as bread
gold as an apple

flaking wallpaper
unfamiliar furniture
leucoma of mirrors
these are true interiors

in my room
and in three suitcases
the day dissolves
in the pool of a dream

 

When my older brother
came back from war
he had on his forehead a little silver star
and under the star
an abyss

a splinter of shrapnel
hit him at Verdun
or perhaps at Grünwald
(he'd forgotten the details)

he used to talk much
in many languages
but he liked most of all
the language of history

until losing breath
he commanded his dead pals to run
Roland Kowalski Hannibal

he shouted
that this was the last crusade
that Carthage soon would fall
and then sobbing confessed
that Napoleon did not like him

we looked at him
getting paler and paler
abandoned by his senses
he turned slowly into a monument

into musical shells of ears
entered a stone forest
and the skin of his face
was secured
with the blind dry
buttons of eyes

nothing was left him
but touch

what stories
he told with his hands
in the right he had romances
in the left soldier's memories

they took my brother
and carried him out of town
he returns every fall
slim and very quiet
he does not want to come in
he knocks at the window for me

we walk together in the streets
and he recites to me
improbable tales
touching my face
with blind fingers of rain

 

I cannot remember
his face

He towered over me
his long legs spread
and I saw
a gold chain
an ash-colored vest
and a scrawny neck
with a dead bow-tie
pinned on

he was first to show us
the leg of a dead frog
touched with a needle
it contracted violently

he led us
through golden binoculars
into the intimate life
of our ancestor
the paramecium

he brought in
a dark kernel
and said: ergot

on his insistence
I became a father
at the age of ten
when after a tense wait
a chestnut sunk in water
released a yellow shoot
and everything around
burst into song
in the second year of the war
our biology teacher was killed
by history's schoolyard bullies

if he went to heaven—

perhaps he now strolls
along long rays of light
wearing gray stockings
with an enormous net
and with a green box
happily banging behind

but if he didn't go up—

when on a path in summer
I meet a beetle clambering
over a mound of sand
I go up to it
make a bow
and say:
—good day Sir
permit me to assist you—

I transfer him gingerly
and watch him go off
until he has vanished
into his murky professor's office
at the end of an avenue of leaves

 

What a thick mist
a gray haze overhead
before me I see only
stalks of bamboo

where are the skies
roiling with clouds
and with light

the fine gentlemen
on the terrace study
a nightingale and rose
on threads of silk

the fine gentlemen
recite their prayers
before them dangles
the sun's gold braid

the cries of wild birds
thick mist
I see a torrential gray
rain of bamboo

 

You can cross the earth by donkey
but really Mary likes to get around
on a moon as plump as a carp
and as shiny as a barber's tray
Trees of Genesis lift their heads
initial flowers sigh wondrously
praise be to you—the birds cry
—Good-day—replies the queen of prophets
the carpenter's wife
Mary

but most of all she likes to travel
astride a tawny and athletic lion
who moves smoothly and lightly
and when he shakes his mane
tame lightning flashes shoot out
This lion's goodness is inhuman
and he takes everything seriously
smells symbols under every tree

behind Mary strides a double-edged Angel
brimming with ultimate words
and following him Mary's favorite—Johnny Angel
carrying her coat and shadow folded four times
Johnny Angel is chubby and good-natured
he only has no hearing

they are almost there
the lion roars smelling his stable of carrots
at the end of a box-hedge avenue
the colorful border post of heaven

 

The seventh angel
is completely different
even his name is different
Shemkel

he is no Gabriel
the aureate
upholder of the throne
and baldachin

and he's no Raphael
tuner of choirs

and he's also no
Azrael
planet-driver
surveyor of infinity
perfect exponent of theoretical physics

Shemkel
is black and nervous
and has been fined many times
for illegal import of sinners

between the abyss
and the heavens
without a rest his feet go pit-a-pat

his sense of dignity is non-existent
and they only keep him in the squad
out of consideration for the number seven

but he is not like the others
not like the hetman of the hosts
Michael
all scales and feathery plumes

nor like Azrafael
interior decorator of the universe
warden of its luxuriant vegetation
his wings shimmering like two oak trees

not even like
Dedrael
apologist and cabalist

Shemkel Shemkel
—the angels complain
why are you not perfect

the Byzantine artists
when they paint all seven
reproduce Shemkel
just like the rest

because they suppose
they might lapse into heresy
if they were to portray him
just as he is
black nervous
in his old threadbare nimbus

 

Like a clumsy bumblebee
he alights on a flower
bending the fragile stem
he elbows his way
through rows of petals
like pages of a dictionary
he wants in
where the fragrance and sweetness are
and though he has a cold
and can't taste anything
he pushes on
until he bumps his head
against the yellow pistil

and that's as far as he gets
it's too hard
to push through the calyx
into the root
so the bee takes off again
he emerges swaggering
loudly humming:
I was in there
and those
who don't take his word for it
can take a look at his nose
yellow with pollen

 

I thought
but I know her so well
we have been living together so many years

I know
her bird-like head
white arms
and belly

until one time
on a winter evening
she sat down beside me
and in the lamplight
falling from behind us
I saw a rosy ear

a comic petal of skin
a conch with living blood
inside it

I didn't say anything then—

it would be good to write
a poem about a rosy ear
but not so that people would say
what a subject he chose
he's trying to be eccentric

so that nobody even would smile
so that they would understand that I proclaim
a mystery

I didn't say anything then
but that night when we were in bed together
delicately I essayed
the exotic taste
of a rosy ear

 

We walk by the sea-shore
holding firmly in our hands
the two ends of an antique dialogue
—do you love me?
—I love you

with furrowed eyebrows
I summarize all wisdom
of the two testaments
astrologers prophets
philosophers of the gardens
and cloistered philosophers

and it sounds about like this:
—don't cry
—be brave
—look how everybody

you pout your lips and say
—you should be a clergyman
and fed up you walk off
nobody loves moralists

 

Never
did I speak—with her
either about love
or about death

only blind taste
and mute touch
used to run between us
when absorbed in ourselves
we lay close

I must
peek inside her
to see what she wears
at her centre

when she slept
with her lips open
I peeked

and what
and what
would you think
I caught sight of

I was expecting
branches
I was expecting
a bird
I was expecting
a house
by a lake great and silent

but there
on a glass counter
I caught sight of a pair
of silk stockings

my God
I'll buy her those stockings
I'll buy them
but—what will appear then
on the glass counter
of the little soul

will it be something
which cannot be touched
even with one finger of a dream

 

An ocean forms on its bed
a star of salt
a wind distills
shining rocks
fallible memory draws up
the map of a city

the starfish of streets
planets of far squares
parks' green nebulae

 

They take them out in the morning
to the stone courtyard
and put them against the wall

five men
two of them very young
the others middle-aged

nothing more
can be said about them

when the platoon
level their guns
everything suddenly appears
in the garish light
of obviousness

the yellow wall
the cold blue
the black wire on the wall
instead of a horizon

that is the moment
when the five senses rebel
they would gladly escape
like rats from a sinking ship

before the bullet reaches its destination
the eye will perceive the flight of the projectile
the ear record a steely rustle
the nostrils will be filled with biting smoke
a petal of blood will brush the palate
the touch will shrink and then slacken
now they lie on the ground
covered up to their eyes with shadow
the platoon walks away
their buttons straps
and steel helmets
are more alive
than those lying beside the wall

I did not learn this today
I knew it before yesterday

so why have I been writing
unimportant poems on flowers

what did the five talk of
the night before the execution

of prophetic dreams
of an escapade in a brothel
of automobile parts
of a sea voyage
of how when he had spades
he ought not to have opened
of how vodka is best
after wine you get a headache
of girls
of fruit
of life