in order to love one another.
We hurriedly snuffed the lamps and lay down
because we were so happy that we had
to clench our teeth not to shout. And then
the masquerading mouse would take fright and go hungry all night.
November 9 — Evening
Winter came suddenly. It smells of rain.
Great north winds uproot the thistles, blow them against the barbed wire.
We’ve put on our jackets. Put our hands in our pockets.
A cloud came down into the middle of the road
took the telegraph poles aside, is telling them something.
Whatever they say, we know
that bread is always bread and what’s right is right.
Their secret conversations don’t bother us at all.
The afternoon truck passed by loaded with flour
leaving behind a torn sack and some orange peels.
One by one the exiles went out and pissed on the grass
pushing the wind with their foreheads
then they stood and looked at the clouds.
Somewhere it still smells of pine sap and crickets.
November 10 — Night
Wind and more wind. A shutter
applauds the desolation. The severed hand of night;
the broken lamp of the moon; the crumbs of nothing.
Where did they put the baskets of grapes?
Where did they hide the summer shoes?
That good trustingness, the anticipatory assent?
The mail truck chugs on slowly behind the wind.
Only the empty barrels of bad weather roll over the roof.
The roof tiles break, the bells fall.
And again the clouds and the wind
and the stars coughing all night
and the well between two words.
You can’t make anything come clear.
The mute child the mute father
one lamp beside another
the mug and the cigarette
the fishbones on the wall from a half-finished gesture
the blinking of the blind man’s eyes
two sealed stars.
Don’t say anything more. A foot
oh, a sure foot to step on the soil
to not ask, to walk,
a deaf foot — it doesn’t hear a thing
when we speak behind our teeth
pretending we don’t know anything, pretending
we can get by without speaking.
November 11
Night fell and I have nothing to say.
Whenever there are no words there is quiet.
I think of a turtle pulling in its legs and head –
it must be so silent in there. I don’t think.
This evening we had a sunset of the kind caught
between two seasons, when the boys grow older
and in their sleep they have no feathers and the hares don’t converse
and they don’t know who loves them and whom they love
and the inner silence of the turtle still has no meaning.
So — we should go to sleep. Turn out the lights.
November 12
In the afternoon we carried stones. Quick work
hand to hand. The winter sun;
the barbed wire; the water jugs; the guard’s whistle.
Here day ends. The evening brings cold.
We should shut ourselves in early. We should eat our bread.
Good work, comrades, easy work
hand to hand. Not everything is this easy
there are things that can’t be passed
from hand to hand. You see it
even if the face barely changes. You see it
in the cut across the eyebrows
in the mouth that opened but didn’t speak
in the silence before supper and even
in the two fingers that raise the lamp’s wick.
When we’ve eaten, our plates remain unwashed
the mice climb up on the table
the moon rests its chin on the iron bars.
Everything has stopped like a murdered man’s watch.
The hand that moves to grasp something opens on the knee.
The scissors paring toenails go no further –
the nail is tough. And you can’t get angry.
Warmth is postponed. Speech and silence are postponed.
Only the lighting of a cigarette around midnight
puts an untimely period on all that remained half-finished.
November 13
The wind assumes its original position
the trees return to their old shape
no longer the wood of the bed-frame, the coat hanger, the wardrobe,
the wooden bowl on the villager’s round table
the wooden spoon that ladles out food
but now the tree with its branches and its shade
in the clouds and wind that strip the land of color
that dress with a certain nakedness free of forgetting and of memory
the houses, the bread, people and their works.
Things are simpler than we thought
so much so that we are sometimes startled; we stand
looking and smiling precisely there where we pressed our nails into our palm.
All this happened slowly, bit by bit. We didn’t notice.
Maybe tomorrow the old things will happen again. Nothing is certain.
But maybe out of all this will remain a tighter grasp of the hand
two eyes that gazed into two other eyes with no tilt of hesitation
a lighter that lit five cigarettes without preference;
and the number five wasn’t one, two, three, four, five,
but only a single number — five.
Of course all this doesn’t make a poem
and here I toss it onto the page like a useless stone on the stones
that will maybe someday help to build a house.
Tonight when I believe everything no one will believe me.
My lamp shines with disbelief. Panayiotis, too.
November 14
When we turn our eyes again to grasp
some difference among the pieces of the day, we don’t find
anywhere to take hold — we lose the shape, the hour,
the color, the face. Then we listen
try to make out some sound — whatever sound
would verify the pace of time, so that there could be
a representation in reverse, box, broomstick, name –
the dice that fall on the table
the wind that limps on the barbed wire
the fork that strikes the plate and continues deeper in.
Otherwise what remains is a circle with no center
a rotation in the air with no motion other than its own
it can’t become the wheel of a car crossing the forest
and if it sometimes becomes a square
it isn’t a window for you to look out at the world
to look at the three carpenter shops in a row in some unknown suburb
only a relation of straight lines, an analogy of corners
dull things, very dull. Perhaps a mathematician or even an astronomer
could fashion from all this something firm and clean.
I can’t, though. And yet I’ve always liked observatories –
a dark staircase, the clock, the telescope,
those snapshots of stars in postures entirely domestic,
swordless Orion, pants down,
Berenice covered in freckles, unwashed, frumpy,
a totally bourgeois kitchen, transported
to metaphysical ground — coffee pots, jugs, pans
grater, salt shaker, baking dishes, tiny specks
of white, radiating slightly, hanging