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

Unlike in the U.S., UFOs in Norway don’t often land in the countryside.  Instead we have domestic flying saucers, especially at Christmastime. With no warning, they fall out of the clear, blue sky, crashing in our blond hair, making mystical patterns in our brain waves. What do they want? Are they hostile? We don’t have a clue. Even our wives shake their heads, unable to speak. There’s a high-pitched humming sound, as if the computer inside is still working, as if someone had survived and is speaking frantically in a strange tongue, someone who has all the answers to our questions. We believe the scientific approach works best, so we secure the crash site, inspect and catalogue each piece of wreckage. The temperature is quickly falling below zero. We gather around the fireplace, a bewildered bunch of primates picking lice out of each other’s hair in the faint December light. 

We bought a cocker spaniel, but it wasn’t realistic enough, so we gave it away. When the goldfish died, we turned to appliances. Our old toaster. The glass-topped stove. Appliances are not flawless either, but the on/off buttons worked so well we decided to develop a similar system of our own.  Instead of buttons, we use baseball bats. One rap on the skull means “It’s your turn to do dishes,” one smack to the shin means “Leave me alone,” a heavy blow to the solar plexus means “Can you repeat that, please?” Life’s a lot simpler now. The kids line up every night to do the dishes, I get to read the paper in peace, and when we’re talking, we get straight to the point, our diction impeccable.

Bread hard as a rock,

rocks that God turned into bread;

loaves prepared with the sweat of the brow,

a brow of rock,

a bread of sweat.

Bread is bread, and wine, wine.

Body and blood of hunger in the world.

A rock of hunger.

Bread eaten away by man,

man made of rock,

bread woman,

rock eating bread.

God hard as a rock,

the rock of the world.

She chopped with apathy the arugula and the endive; she topped it with crumbs of almond and macadamia, sherry vinegar and avocado. When she grabbed the beef sirloin in her hands, she seemed to be chopping out her worst enemy’s heart. She set the table, with no glow or fragrance, and sat to wait. When he got there, they ate in silence. The rest could be read in the afternoon’s paper.

We just said: Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth. And we wolfed down the rocks they put on the table.

Drowning people don’t always sink to the bottom. It is even enough for someone struggling in the water to remember that he knew how to swim and then he sees his trousers flap around like the legs of a jumping jack. That’s what happened to me at the Concarneau regattas. I was perfectly calm before sinking, or well those elegant people in their skiffs passing by will notice my efforts or well…in short, a certain optimism. The shore so close! With life-sized Israelite individuals of the most gracious sort. What surprised me in getting out of the water was that I was hardly damp, and that people looked at me not as a poodle, but as a man.

It’s a little party in the countryside! A little party near a well. The poor little girl is alone on the beach, on the steep rocky slope of the dune, and you might say there is a halo around her head. Oh, I’ll know how to save her! Me, the fat puffy one, I rush I run. Down there near the well they are playing the Marseillaise and I’m rushing to save her. I haven’t mentioned yet the color of the sky because I wasn’t sure that with the sea it doesn’t make a smooth painting the color of a blackboard smeared with chalk, yes, with a diagonal trail of chalk like the blade of a guillotine.