Smooth-cheeked kid uncombed unwashed
at morning call with clouds for company
dark red sweater unbuttoned pants
still sleepy — a scrap of sleep melting in his hair
a rembetika song in his pocket
I’ll comb you, I’ll wash you, I’ll tighten your belt
I’ll take back all the words they took from me
the words no one knows to give me
the words I can’t ask for.
December 6
When the signal was given, we weren’t there.
No, we were there, but we refused.
Between the signal and the refusal
we now chase a bird
or the wind.
Does the sun hang
from the hook of a word?
You’re unjust.
December 7
The cook left his pots
and is feeding a sparrow.
But the song doesn’t last long,
the dead take it underground.
On packs of cigarettes
we scribble hurried numbers
that correspond to nothing.
Addition — subtraction, addition — subtraction.
And yet, calculating, calculating
you manage in the end not to cry.
December 8
Quiet day. An empty table.
I see things as they are.
I have my hands in my pockets.
Who can I thank for this?
Under the lukewarm water of night I held
the hand of sleep and the sense of forgetting
the texture of the blanket and of the wall.
If you lift the sheet
you won’t find me.
Try to find me — don’t you understand?
I’m deeper in.
There were two glasses on the table
a stool in the corner
the shadow of a hand that might have picked flowers
a shadow split between bed and ceiling
I don’t remember I wasn’t quick enough to see
only the shadow of the window that didn’t open
on the white wall
and the hand that didn’t cut flowers
the hand that itself was cut in the first instant of moonlight
falling in the middle of the road in the muddy waters
beside the broken wheel of the mail truck.
A mandolin an angry angel
a glass of water a cigarette
the sound that binds us together for a moment beyond our solitude
so we can part again without saying goodnight.
Later the eyes that open two holes in the wall.
I planted a tree. I’ll raise it.
Whatever happens I’m not going back.
December 9
I’ll hold on to the dust from your hair
your raised collar that winter afternoon
beside the old train cars.
There I saw more of you than I do here
I kissed the train’s shadow
on the foreign road you crossed
kicking a dry branch with your foot.
December 10
I ask, I ask, tell me,
but first put down that knife
I’m not a sheep, I kick at the wind.
December 11
The floor seems in a good mood today
as does the cane bench
I look at everyone the same way
it’s quiet
I like it
I want to hold on to it.
And yet
a snuffed lamp in the morning
doesn’t give you the slightest idea
of what night can be.
December 12
The color that suits me most doesn’t suit me now –
I see it on the hands of others.
The afternoon is sad.
A lone dog walks through the field.
Hands locked in pockets.
The inner barbed wire. The outer barbed wire.
I think how refusal
is not a permanent position –
like the chair behind the door.
December 13
The ball continually between
two kicks
and I watch myself playing myself
the only spectator
punished by not being sad.
The people work for as long as they last
and last longer than they can.
We will carry stones
we will chop wood
we will clean toilets.
I too.
I want to look out
to where things aren’t so difficult
the aluminum cups the jugs the pots and pans
the drying rack with clean dishes each morning
opposite the window
a square of soft orange light
that doesn’t fold up — it unfolds.
December 14
A Monday made of snow
Tuesday a continuation of Monday
nothing began nothing ended.
The broken oar
the storm bell
an umbrella –
the eternal suspicion of hypocrisy.
The voices always take the stance
of a shoeless corpse.
Mud
after a point
is no longer mud.
You step freely.
Well
the dead
have it pretty good.
December 15
Saturday becomes a hammer at the end of the road.
We walk we walk we know
we walk butting the wind with our heads
leaning slightly forward so as not to hear
the sound of our shadow behind us.
Later we try to stick back on, with flour paste,
a severed head.
December 16
We are clean we await our time
we are just and resolute
the snow spreads itself quietly
beneath the black almond trees and the barbed wire
with the roots that curl around the lowest stone
leaving a hungry sparrow above.
A good time for forgetting
and for the knowledge of forgetting.
Later on people get angry,
earlier they don’t know.
Naked trees and busts of statues.
The jackdaws walk on the snow.
We forgot everything
we left
a mug of tea on the table
for someone who never came;
a mug — no longer steaming.
It’s good he never came, the snow says;
it’s good he never came, — the snow is good.
December 19
It’s cold. We peeled potatoes.
We washed our hands. We combed our hair.
We stood there with the comb in our hand.
A comb always maintains its doubts
that things are ever so simple.
December 20
Not a cow or a dog in the fields.
The guard at his post, collar raised.