Like a nameless source below the cathedral,

like a spray of light within the pall of fog,

open yourself, and come to life once more.

Water your heart with no remorse.

Try to be like the sky – cold and blue,

or gaze at the gulls above the Neris as if

through an arrow-slit in the castle wall,

but only when their wings are full of wind for you.

Groan like the brash ice, or hiss like the slush

that melts in the flow of the street –

for this is the voice, returning to the sun,

the one you took from a nameless source.

1. Nike

Lemon rinds,

            the taste of cinnamon,

            wine from the Balkans, drunk.

O morning – so clean,

            belonging not to God,

            nor people, nor the devil,

in such an empty apartment,

            in heated tin and glare of glass,

in a white

circle –

            in the madness of June’s sun –

            I lie like a cross, and tears are for naught.

For these broken, battered wings –

            this dust shining above the street,

for my naked, wincing shoulders in the light,

            I hate you –

            but open my mouth

to your ghastly purple gale…

2. Red Tunic

A woman with a red tunic

            in the plazas of the world,

a woman by a microphone –

            anguish augments her voice,

wandering among the landless crowds,

            pale and petite,

splashed by a breaking wave,

            stormy, salty and bright…

She sings.

            Ears stuffed with wax

            – the night’s black un-ravellers

can’t hear.

            Greece – a vast concentration camp.

            You had to leave,

tying yourself to the mast…

            The weapons of the vanquished rust:

stacks of shields, spears and helms.

            The Sirens’ hands – bound and bloodstained.

3. Witch

The midday square – stifling and loud.

            (Movie theaters – empty.)

They swarm. And a fierce, subhuman curiosity

            unites thousands.

A pillar of shame grows above houses

            like a strange, desiccated tree.

And my gaze is full of pride –

            delirious and dying.

(The typhus wards, saunas, gulag

            barbers are packed.

Cut hair lies in red bands.)

            And anger flows –

incomprehensible,

            as if I were born on a different planet.

And raving voices throb –

            hoarse from dull pleasure.

A heavy chain chafes my neck.

            The hangman grows bored.

(He tosses empty bottles under the table

            with a mad crash.)

Truth – from my childish mouth,

            wild, untouched.

Light it. My body longs

            for a cleansing flame. 

I am two in one. One lives a long life in honor

of another and counts the stars for him until dawn.

I am two in one. One forged to the other forever,

if forever will allow Russian cubits to be its measure.

An enemy and a friend in one. And sometimes two enemies

who challenge one another to old-fashioned duels. And it turns out

that both get away with wounds and are left on the ground

riddled with bullets, until they lick the blood from themselves with a song.

And again a black cat may spring up or a frog,

we’ll stay, unintentionally, two in one from now on.

We know the double-hatred will not divide us,

that two-as-one are beating on the gate to heaven.

I am two in one. One dreams for the other. Let us free

our two-ness peacefully from the bars. And drink up

the summer sun to its last drop, let’s do that, as Socrates

drank all the way to the bitter end his poisoned cup.

“Now, why is it that you never mention your Siberian father in this diary?”

A question came. And instead of an answer, just see:

Before my eyes his skin has grown over mine,

and his beard has ripened on me, before my eyes.

Now your son has wholly become that reclusive being—his father,

with his fingers I roll soft tobacco in cigarette paper,

the night sits on a sparkling polishing wheel, rose colored and pure.

Where did I learn page after page of Gemora by heart?

Where did I learn to play the violin? With his fingers, I play

on otherworldly strings with the memory of the Garden of Eden.

Filled with sparkling ice, whose is this shovel?

With his big-boned fingers I’m playing his fiddle.

We exist eternally in the same mass,

the old snow has young strength, both to be covered in snow,

no guns nor artillery can separate us now.

*

“Now, why is it that you never mention your Siberian father in the diary?”

Gone the window and through it the poor Sabbath guest, the cherry tree,

who came to stay the night with me along its journey.

Gone the cherry tree made of stars, they have all been stolen

by cosmic thieves.

This drilled hole has only left me as a vestige

a token amount of heavenly air, which had come in through that window,

brilliant

and four-sided.

That token of heavenly air, which had drifted in through that window

has been stolen by no one, nor shot to pieces.

The vision of my life owns a spacious home

inside four slender, slender lines.

And the greatest wonder of all: the cherry tree drifts in

to spend the night with me as it did then, that guest,

and the cherry tree made of stars, too, finds its way inside

through those same sweet slender, slender lines.

The moon looks

the worse for wear

through the long cylinder

on a shaky frame

set up at the edge of Taksim Square;

but the view costs just 500 lira,

the man swivels the wheels,

you bend over a small lens

and see it, near,

white and cool, craters and valleys,

even its black mark de beauté–

somewhat the worse for wear,

yet not nearly as shabby or real

as Taksim and its traffic,

the withered books on dusty racks,

the noisy almond vendors.

You walk across the square through the crowd.

Oleander bushes bask

in circular shadows

under halos of neon.

The moon is small: a bright disc

without contour in the haze of summer night.

You alone know what it looks like,

lifeless,

precisely white and cool, almost blue.

Outside the hotel window the Dnieper,

a sea with white sandbanks.

                        In the hotel room,

above accurately disheveled pillows

a birch-lined boulevard in winter, in oil,

as I have seen today a hundred times

without tiring,

in a flat, backward land

plagued by war, peaceful today

with a silence that renders the language of frogs

and storks more silent still.

No ships on the Dnieper. How I

would like to go down to Odessa,

where it is cheerful, Pontic-bright,

with women and other boulevards

and errant clouds, spirit-blue.

The eyes are the first to die in this summer-autumn,

then the hand, then the rest of the body.

At the left hip now deeper layers of muscle,

Fine-grained strata, paper-like.

Above it the chest, caved in,

above it a room full of teeth.

Everything ruinous – filth and skeleton.

But the skin delicate still, like petals of poppy.

Above all, don’t expose it to the sun: spread open

the parasol, suddenly anxious.

Thirteen pomegranates rolling towards you.

And what of it? We want fruit pulp, rubies,

abundance before the fervent, final prayer.

St. Isaac’s freezes to each dead eyelash

on the aristocratic blue streets:

there’s a grate of strangers’ logs, and ash,

an organ grinder’s death, bear fleece.

As if it were a pack on a leash, the whipper-in

whips out the fire, and it starts to sprawl.

The furnished globe of the earth is spinning,

and the face-pulling mirror plays the know-all.

The staircase landing’s all squabbles and mist,

breathing, breathing and song.

Schubert’s talisman’s cold and stiff

beneath the fur coat. Keep on, keep on…

3 June 1935

January. Where can I go in this open

city that clings like a psychotic?

I pass clamps and bolts and feel like lowing:

have the locked doors got me drunk or what?

These howling lanes take the form of tights,

the convoluted streets are storerooms,

places where hoodlums can hurriedly hide,

then leap like knights out of corners.

Into the warty gloom, its pit,

I stumble to the pump and find it frozen.

I feed on the blackdamp, skid

and scatter the feverish crows.

And into the planks of the iced-up box,

I sigh and call, the crows now airborne:

“Talk to me, readers, advisers, doctors,

on these steps that feel like thorns.”

1 February 1937

Gadget berry dimple; grand treaty. Louder, lonely tandoori.

Pajama gamma, buried home, timbales, grand tree. Melis-iss-sa: “Lolita longs for me.”

Gadget berry (gin blossom glossary). Louder, lonely cats or you, sad salad? Bim:

“Pajama toughen!” I, some olive, been banned. Glee club? Wow! only me (gin berry) banned.

O cat and lonely mice. [rhinoceros solo] Hans Tammen: “Lolita longs for me.” Who?

Pajama Rhinoceros. [solo: Hans Tammen]

Blue queue tarantula; blue lager low.

Chin, chin, you rule a lot. Chin, chin, you rule a lot. Chin, chin, sandwich bar. (Some olive sham!) 

Elephant totem, bruised salad. Pillow men: “Bruised salad.” Pillow men: “drum louder.” 

Hell, no! Ha! Pang bland. A fellow purse of mine, a fellow purse of mine. [legato: tire]

Pajama bee’s halo. Grand treaty glossary. Zinc starter, pimp! Alone ogre grow. 

Voilà: lacks a toe. Voilà: sing this hymn. Voilà: Oulipo Fallujah Morneau. 

Toughen, ein sing this hymn? No, not mine. Bungalow? No, not mine. Bungalow toughen—I shim.

Pajama timbales. Oh, berry pajama. “Dada the pajama,” a fellow pins.

“Dada the bungalow, bungalow,” god of men. 

Dada the bring blonde?

Dada brung!

we will cross the border at night

we will be thrown out of the moving train

we will pay blood

to cram on a makeshift boat

We will arrive haggard from the trip

they will throw a blanket over our shoulders

They will ask us for documents

where we come from, where we want to go

and we won’t know how to say, we will hear voices

catch sight of foreign faces

beyond a glass door

of those once out the door

and they will shake their heads at us, the ID

is not in order

a simple yes is all that was needed

the case is not within our competence

And we will be packaged,

we will be addressed, delivered

or we will get through out of mercy

through the links of our own network

we will find a corner of the sidewalk

where no one sees you as clandestine

we will wait there

for eternity to end 

I

Come on, your laces are undone, tuck your sweater in, it will be cold,

what’s in your pocket, where did you pick it up, chuck it, go, how do you feel

look into my eyes, Mum loves you, Galip, you come here too,

Mum loves you, Dad is proud of you, just one hour of sea, and then you will meet other children, tomorrow we will sleep

in a new bed, Europe, Canada, bigger beds,

of course, a sip of water, drink, be careful not to get wet, you’re all covered with sand, we’ll wash our hands,

that’s it, perfect, let’s go

II

The picture is permitted.

It is permitted to see the picture. Permitted not to see the picture. To say that you had not seen. That you could not. That you did not have to.

It is permitted to publish the picture. Permitted to blur the picture. To share. To say I like. To say I do not like.

It is permitted to talk of shots. Of discretion and confidentiality. It is permitted to talk of pictures.

It is permitted to see the picture again in your mind. In similarly-laid out clothes. On a bedspread that is a shore of better fortune.

It is permitted, in front of the picture, to say yes, but. Have both feet planted in the sand. Not move a step. Sink.

It is permitted to forget the image. To close your eyes. Deny. While still

what happens in the picture

(has happened, will happen)

is permitted

III

The state of health or disease of the so-called faith is not such that

a father forced to carry home three-quarters of what was his family

a father previously forced to take from home the same family by hand (wife and two sons

of whom a picture remains taken on the games chair at the exact center of a double-smile

despite the storm raised (in clothes not unlike those soon to be returned)

against the rising tide of history) towards the final shore

(himself accused of having overturned the boat)

a father who still prays while burying himself along with

I said, the state of preservation of this unexpectedly strong

faith that meanwhile in Kobanî is on the verge of swallowing itself once and for all

I said, it is not such that

requiem aeternam dona eis

I said

I do not know what I was saying

Why, it’s you again pretty young woman?

little slender lady

big as a quarter of a pipe

or two pennies of pancakes!

To make a body like yours                  

delicate statuette

the recipe is a tall order: nothing

rendered in clay

Has the strength to shape this nothing,

you obtained something:         

I can’t distinguish very well

but it seems pink

You a painting of spring

of foaming champagne

of fancy frills you bat a long time

and it’s your sweet little face

O flower a breath may form

a child’s smile illuminates

you have no lack of art of love

to possess the gift to please!

Old man throat rattling on his bed

suffering all the ills here below

already turning blue at the mouth

violets of death

Dawn after dawn

betrayed by cruel destiny

to suffer further anew

he awoke every morning

O death! cut short my martyrdom

cried the unfortunate old man

does it matter to you

if I die a little earlier, a little later?

I’ve lived too many years

and I long for the eternal night

for in my faded pupils

the world is reflected in black

I expect nothing of life

account instead of acquiring me

a youth unsatisfied

the rest of my time to run

And now suddenly pale

under his carnival mask

he saw the frightful snub nose

standing at his doorstep on horseback!

At last! he said. You’re good to me

you who lured me for so long

and so like the Madonna

he held out his thin arms

But he spurred his beast

and continued on his path

without even turning his head

towards this old parchment

Farther in the meadows

two lovers living well             

running in the flowering herbs

you would have said two children

They did not know life

poor children! what love

and their soul was enslaved

one to the other with no return

Joyously going through open country

smiling with their April eyes

the wind holding its breath

not to ruffle their babble

And now dreadful death

violently descended upon them

and a gesture took the lover

in the arms of her sweetheart

As I passed through these opaque cities crumpling the newspaper’s strange signs there were seasons and sparrows and glimmers and syllables lost all around the brazier’s coals

I wandered past opera houses losing threads

Ah yes I walked in snow and inferno having no need for a closing parenthesis run aground twenty times on the silt of the night delta giving my blood its plain

And in the debris the remembrance the rumours

So I dozed in the scars of cities

Long repose of a river alone

Lip touching the crevice of time.

Leaping from a blank page a false

Chicken seller offers me a mug of beer

A cigar when a chain of cutout

Figures is paper-mâchéd down the boulevard

The end of the strike threads its way

Between the wax museum and the 

Feast tableclothed in an austere cream

The organist of transparency

Performs a birdsong to muddle

Drop by drop a giant oil tanker

In the blueing black toward the crowd 

Night

Cul-de-sacs of rats

Scattered stars

Night of shortened breath

I call I

Dream I scrawl

Between distant clamour

And this quarrel closer by

My grandmother walked in a little yellow wood crunching in an autumn I no longer recall till a poacher on the run knocked her down to the ground When I leaned in and pressed close my ear I only found an ancient book whose open pages moved no more Lifting the book I was taken back to a town abandoned by its orioles With one gesture a photographer beneath his hood turned a baker’s entire family to stone The sky itself was yellow too and the end of the road did not yet have any monument to the dead.

In the desert of solitude, my love, are tremors

the shadows of your voice, mirages of your lips

In the desert of solitude, beneath the ash

and dust of distance, blossom the jasmines and roses

of your touch

A flame of your breath rises somewhere nearby,

smoldering          softly     in its own perfume

far beyond the horizon       your heartening eyes

drop shimmering dew

How lovingly, my love, your memory visits me,

lays her hand on my heart:

I surmise—though, this is the dawn of parting

—that the day of migration has waned

      and the night of our union, crested

The sky today is a sea-lane

busy with the ships of passing

clouds

whose decks are masted

with sunbeams draped in

diaphanous sails

The city’s domes are the islands

of this sea

where everyone is busy

risking it all:

see that blackbird swimming,

that eagle

    diving in…

There is no contest of power

here: no battleship fleets or flags;

no submarines creeping on the

seabed; no rockets or cannons

And, though, every element

here is bursting with charge—

just look how peaceful

these bustling waters are

Samarkand, 1978

In a little while,

the moon will be

robbed on every

rooftop;

mirrors will thirst

for vanished reflections.

One by one, the stars will

disintegrate—

exploding into

dust that will rain down

from heaven’s moist eyes.

Inside night-quarters

tired beyond hope

someone will gather his

loneliness, he will spread it

over;

at this faithless hour,

at this time of turning away—

when every man is only for

himself without memory

of another,

at this hour of severance,

at the end of our tryst

with the world:

wild heart, where will you go

at this hour?

No one will recognize you, let it go.

Who will you find now? Let it go.

And whoever you come across

by chance, you’ll regret seeing:

wild heart, where will you go

at this hour?

Stay a little longer—

wait until morning’s fleam

has roused every eye once more

              like a wound;

then all the helpless slain

at the end of the night—

forgetting the destitute hour,

the end of the night—

will insist on meeting,

on being called by name