On the label of N.’s body, the vintage year is written:

17 years she’s been poured out to the world

And suddenly her mother refuses to forgive.

“Her hole got opened,” she says, “her mind got closed.”

N.’s glassy eyes are shining with tears.

At nights, she crosses her dance-weary legs

While she sits on bar stools, watching

How the French cork flies from the champagne mouth,

How the Mexican is worn like a sombrero over the tequila’s head

And the German with the sharpened teeth is biting the beer’s neck.

“Mom, come see,” she wants to cry and imagines instantly

The answer: “This is not just a cork, this virginity.

This is your dowry.”

N. returns home and sets her dance shoes down

Near the bed like two kisses upon the floor’s cheek.

Pain, where are you?  Invisible here;

each vision contradicts you.  The sun

gilds the city, shines on the sea.

All sorts of sea-bound cars

carry something or someone.

Everything moves cheerfully, as if

the meaning of life was to be happy.

I don’t sleep.  I see a road, a grove

making my chest tight, anxious;

where we went to be alone and together,

another boy and I.

It was Easter; the rites long and strange

and old.  And if you loved me—

I thought—wouldn’t there be more tomorrow?

And tomorrow never came.  It pained me,

like the ache of evening;

that was not (I later learned) friendship,

it was love;

the first; a happiness

had between the hills and the sea of Trieste.

But why can’t I sleep tonight, because of

a story from, I think, fifteen years ago?

Spring, I don’t like you, I want

to say on the street, even the premonition

of trees under your spell hurts me

like a razor-cut.  The shadow of still thin

bare branches on ground

still naked troubles me, as if I too

might have to

be reborn.  The graveyard

trembles when you come, ancient

Spring, which more than any other season

cruelly resurrects and kills.

A Greek will revive you with moon water.

Love knows not of corpses, although a dead body is fate.

You don’t throw away poems.

You don’t throw away love.

The poem absorbs fragility.

Composes the small parts into the white light of a shell.

Penguins with their small immortal souls do the same.

Their faith is an egg at nature’s feet.

Fragments are bone.

There is no woman without a man and his world.

No man without a woman and her world.

Love is the only warranty for the soul to revive.

When I come out of the burning house I’m speechless.

Hideous freaks and monsters begin to assert themselves.

Heraclitus is already feeling for his flute and calling for balance.

Soldiers and nouns turn to ashes.

The grease pencil slides down the long lists of fear.

It makes note of the dead and the debtors, the cost and the suffering.

For ever we bring the dead back to life.

Mummies are a method, not the result.

Meringue cookies hold the end and beginning together.

When you reject a part, you can no longer assemble the whole.

The first has his eyes,

the second his hair,

the third his voice.

The twentieth his sentences,

the two hundredth his ear for music.

The thousandth his laughter,

the three hundred thousandth his tongue.

Do I have his heart?

I wasn’t imagining things.

Embellishing anything. I never waited.

Only expected.

I taste the imagination of days old and new.

What a happy course.

A bud in the middle of home is a true eternal flame.

At a touch every cell of the body awakens.

Illuminating everything from the Achilles heel to medulla oblongata,

from the left little finger to the right index finger; the rest accordingly.

Hugs and kisses ignite the eternal desire

that every inch of the body were shot through with light.

Illuminated body! Don’t leave it. I won’t.

What do you do with love that’s permitted or forbidden!

It’s all a substitute for fire and fire’s a substitute for all.

Illuminating the liver, the eyes and the nose.

The faces that you look at, see.

A letter makes a word and the word makes a garden

and the garden creates warmth and the warmth dries the soul.

A dry soul is Kneipp. Water heals everything.

Without pause, the blackbird chirps meaning.

The rose is no less real than the devil swirling storms in the desert.

But not in the man unless he lets him. Love lights up like Hanukkah,

Diwali, and St. Lucia. In the tent it pauses.

Burns for the dead and the living. Holding the beasts at bay.

A lightning bolt is the blacksmith’s fire.

In my voice I hear him not yet minted.

In your voice you hear him only just shod. All the same, only different.

A spark transforms on the spot. The fire burns so death can’t come close.

The thinnest foil, immaterial, strains evil.

No back-and-forth. No forth-and-back and back again.

I draw open the eyes! Dawn is the true manna. Pecked at by atheists.

A dark blue fig tree ripens.

The swallows’ young still know of red sweet things.

The worn-out swallow sails in the heat and sings

while its young already catch on their own.

To feed both nests is almost to die.

One leg of the table stands at the source.

At the crack of dawn I pick the verses off.

The sun tilts it, the fruits slide off, I don’t know where.

With my hands on my knees I listen

to what the little table wants.

The western one is the seaside one, the leisurely one.

I haven’t folded the letter for nine years.

I materialize words from south to north.

From north to north? I don’t know where I am.

From heart to heart is the shortest path.

To handwrite a letter is lovely.

First it does a round among the stars.

Bats ward off all the traps.

How to lay your voice in the palm without paper?

Because you discovered that

the world was not yours, your world

crashed. Your world

that just because was not yours

crashed but not because of you

Until you stand up now

to a world that stands on nothing

You want to continue

after everything had come to pass, after everything

was made known. Now

the voices are calm, no longer

one utters a word that once

had its use. The self had use

for the self, you wished to say

in the end to commemorate what passes for life

You will write

yourself. You will write

on every word you will choose

in order to submit yourself

to every word you will renounce

in order to once again fail

in every renunciation

On the day you need

to say goodbye, you cannot walk away from

your room. At the last moment

you will decide to slip it inside your pocket

There’s your bed, small table, lamp

for reading. You will travel

from thereon without leaving

your room. In your frequent reentry

into it, you need to always ask for permission

Each day, you cannot walk away from

your room. Inside your pocket

every last moment, you slip it in

At this moment, you curse once again having lived

for art

— to l.z.

this is your tree, river, lawn,

your big house, your america.

this is your life on another planet,

you slow down the car to lead me through foothills,

like a documentary of private life on the wide screen.

reprints by impressionists hang on the living room wall,

your daughter’s toys piled high on the floor,

daytime when your husband goes to manhattan,

and your child to kindergarten, the streets fall silent

except for conversation between vacuum and lawn mower,

on the treadmill, like a toy train

on its oval track you go around and around…

here i am surprised by a sense of strangeness,

not that you have already changed your nationality

or become someone’s wife, i am

surprised that your wanderings have so soon come to the end—

the dreamed-of happy land of our youth

already abbreviated into a comfort cage,

and on the thick velvet couch,

once we speak of china, your mouth curls in a smirk.

i am saddened that you have missed an epic change in time,

a myth of time upended amid reality;

every one of your years here,

is a day that we have spent back home.

twilight, i return to the hotel in queens,

put my coat on the back of the chair, before my eyes

that wild girl floats by, loving

freedom more than carmen depicted by mérimée, walking

among marchers in a parade, like a goddness painted by delacroix.

…memory retains nothing but the kite’s spool,

i know i can no longer take you home,

even blessings seem unnecessary.

no one to entrust a mission, deep in the night

i dream of myself one step over the pacific,

back to fire-bright smoke-thick battlefields,

loading crossbows and shooting down those toxic suns. 

not a drop last night, yet i woke

feeling hung over—at a hotel

before a steamed mirror, in shock, i

listened to the city’s river of traffic. here

i know a friend, who brushed his gifts aside

and scurried to capture cheap praises; a

classic literature professor, who loved his words more

than he did others; a girl, a music school grad

lost a love yet fell in love with this place,

had three jobs and precious little sleep,

—sadder than this was the passion drained away

from several generations in a flash, all of them

rushing ahead, cursing, complaining,

like countless rusty swords impelled to stick together—

a usual spring day, who amongst them

could discern my exacting wishes?

let them keep the best face on the past.

let me pass by without a visit and continue my journey—

throat dry, tongue scorched by soldering iron,

words swirl in dazed mind, so slow to come,

thus the need to pray year after year,

embrace rain showers repeatedly, landscapes and forked roads.

frail like tree shadow, in the puddles of the road

i feel the pain of being rolled over by wheels;

i am cold, because there is no light on the other side,

when people meet, lanterns are turned down low. 

Walking through the cemetery, the most fitting place

to think over a résumé, I try to recall the tarot card

that could calm me down. I know you all will return again

for the love that moves men beneath the stars’ clockwork.

And yet I’m here, seeing you all beyond the tranvía glass,

the chain of these events. Like when I was a boy,

I read your poems nestled in the night’s soul and I hear you

like a pilot dodging wood and granite crosses.

Since then we’ve been alone, no one’s shown up to join us,

and this squall, hollow day is the only consolation.

They’ve gone, the words I still can’t speak

and the squirrels that, given the chance, scamper among the oaks.

Take pity, I tell the lights glimmering beyond the pond

and the doves sleeping in the elderberry, bidding farewell

the carpenter’s hair, my friend, like someone lost in the dark.

From the craggy earth a wildflower grows in its own way.

The reign of lovers descends over abandoned houses

and June’s strawberries. The flash hardly lasted a minute,

but I shine because of you, my heart of hearts, in the cage

of the Empress and crickets.

As for us, afire with the mission of the Flood,

make the night a canto for bluest affections.

Dark as they are in the nightwatch marblework,

leave them the evening to speak the forgiveness

they’ve sought from those they could not find.

Choose there thy daily bread, they will give you

one thing: beauty, if you find them truly human,

and divorce like ebbing tides the anger from the terms.

They’re with God, they tie his laces; imagine it,

the shame, to boot them over the edge now.

Alone, for even less than asked, the dove leaves the Ark

and flies back with a hook in its mouth.

The widows’ truce returns to the tailor’s home

from the far edge of the floodwaters.

Nothing changes with the weight of precaution,

this is what we’ve come to believe.

It’s tough to consider where what wasn’t was,

how he will sort them out to persuade

each night’s gatekeeper of the Presence.

Boil water for both, for both the frost settles

over the olive trees and those that sew, sew until sunrise.

        the objects

their erect

        presence    

     their flickering form

or their shadow

to measure the body

or to neglect it

Morandi walks along the boundaries

navigates a field

of wild violets

and rises toward things

        the vase

            the bottle

               the empty cup

               again and again

        and again

plunge from shadow

     into light

glow in the open

and tremble

        for the hand

        trembles

and the eye

        trembles

before the vast

        silence

of the world

        Cannot

                 the bird

                 sing?

        Or can it –– the bird?

 Singing is

        but

        a sun

 Does

        the bird

        know its sun?

 Is knowing versed

        in what the bird

                 cannot

                 sing?

 Nonetheless

        the bird

        sings

        without knowing

 What

        then is knowing?

 If the bird

        without knowing

                 sings

 the river

        without knowing laughs

 the wind without knowing

                 filters

        its sweet sound

        among the

                 branches

 In what is knowing versed in?

 Does the bird

        perchance

        know

where sounds

        come from?

 Voice

        sound

        whistle

 Does the learner know?

The village windows are aglow at night

At each window sits a youth, pensive, dreamy

The village is asleep, but time crawls on

On the poor little workbench – meager little tools

The ceiling is low and the doorstep is low

Oh, the heft of all the world on each youth.

In the quiet of night, in the quiet of the valley,

There! See that boy, hard as steel.

In the quiet of the steppe, undisturbed by anyone

See another, deep as the earth. 

In the charcoal fumes, the smoke of night’s light

See a third, bright as the heavens. 

And the heart quivers and the heart awakens

On poor little windows the world stirs, shifts.

And this time, with a mouth parched, bound by fever

I will rise up to you and say this:

From tiny meager rooms in this mammoth land

The bold demand rises in the distance.

In the poor night’s light fuzzy with smoke

Stars reveal themselves, flicker in the skies. 

Youths carry them – barefoot and naked—

Rolled up and wrapped in village women’s kerchiefs

An aleph in the mouth, but with sorrow they carry

From doorsteps, barefoot – the stars, the world. 

The sea fevers for night’s arrival

The distance is pensive, lost in thought

A blue stillness, such a stillness

Somewhere a sailboat has tarried

A sail – a cradle with childish sleep

And stillness swings up onto the new moon, dangles

And swings like that and rocks like that

On the silver rim, on the silver edge.

In a tiny silver nap, it dozes off

And a tiny star drops into the cradle.

The sea is set out like a silver bed

And stars lie there, spellbound

If the new moon lays a path over the sea,

A mirrored path over the stillness of the sea,

And charms and enchants and wakes and calls—

Well then, who doesn’t become intoxicated? Who doesn’t get stirred up?

So in the middle of the night who will skate

With the stars on the silver wake? 

Skate like that on the mirrored rim

Together with the stars, side by side,

Come as a silver one to the new moon

And put to sleep the parched mouth in the cradle? 

If such sparkle of passion and desire keeps trickling,

Who there will prevent me from being a child?  

And no calm is coming, no plenitude—

On growth and on regrowth a wager!

A wager, a wager, and an eclipse

If only distance and height will suffice.

The heart isn’t filled, the brain isn’t sated,

The farmer in the field, the craftsman in the workshop

Feeds the field concealed in dreams.

The farmer doesn’t sleep, he wakes and he wants

The rye to be ample, abundant

Seven persons shall carry a grain.

A hindrance is no hindrance, labor doesn’t thwart

Neither heart nor head snuffs itself out.

Eyes phosphor from heights and ideals

At the wheel of a machine a youth is a-dream:

And where there’s one – let there be seventy now,

Joy should multiply for sweat, for pain.

But the mouth is parched, bound by fever.

So I’ll rise up to you and tell you this:

Each seed of time is expensive, so dear

But not for sale – no, for planting!

In the spring the land is plowed and green,

So reduce the time and improve the ilk

Increase the wager and reduce the toil—

The land is so tired from rising and moving.

In a dream       the man with the indistinct face

I praised him three times, beat on him three times

On waking       near me had assembled many beautiful people;

I am coarse, I am tender

when you rush at the horizon’s flowing clouds, giggling like an idiot

twisting your sprinting knee till it snaps       like twisting

a sparrow’s neck till it snaps…where we stop

we remember some things that once bloomed

fresh flowers          buried shallow in the split-open soul

Have I ever been content? Have I ever renounced hostility?

Have I ever trembled in love without reason or cause?

An old star lights the provincial government     heaped bodies in the weeds

under a red regime I find a self as yet unnamed

he is precisely as incomplete              as he is exquisite

At night he can’t get to sleep            when he sleeps

he opens the eyes of the owl so wide —  

the moon’s shadow goes west           the thief has fallen asleep in his dream!

While you search for something

everything makes me search for you

but you slip my pursuit like a phantom.

You mummify my longing with this absence

and leave my bags on the platform.

I abandon this train.

I had hoped you might come to me

but now I unfurl my sails

hoping you will be a wind to take me, perhaps to our port.

Caravans of travelers caught on layover

realize their dreams are shut up in an iron coffin.

I remain on land forgetting departure

knowing the desert is stupefied every year by the burgeoning palms.

Wishing you would come

I postpone age. I postpone my struggle

and let time butcher me in my prime.

No one knows why women die waiting for twilight.

Why men die murderous in their desire.

Yet we live to love, as two strangers long to cross paths on a city bus.

You know that you will come to the platform’s darkness

where my heart appears behind the train’s windows,

and you’ll wave to me in the last seconds.

I cannot step off. I cannot step in.

Eventually we will know what happened between us.

The heart will have no right to beat anymore.

I repine on my seat

and a strangeness passes over me, certifying my solitude,

certifying the many cigarettes I shared, stranded, waiting long with others.

Clouds of smoke filled our room, flying easterly against the westbound trains

and snatching my baggage as required. We agreed, the smoke and I,

to leave love’s memory in the ink-black Tigris.

It is the heart that comes and goes suddenly

no matter its beating now.

No, I will not hunt for your childish face in this billowing smoke.

I will just lay down my head on the shoulder of impossibility

and, after waiting for you, refuse to relinquish departure’s roughness.