The wind has taken the fuzz off things.
Nothing is soft.
A woman came out onto her doorstep
she lights her brazier
the wind took her place in the room
the smell of charcoal remained
and the woman, one with the door.
If a laugh falls in the wind
it won’t be from joy or from spite;
it’s a laugh that has nothing
not even the fear that it’s nothing.
December 21
Of course certain things must exist
even outside the mirror
I sit and smoke
if I have time.
December 22
When we go out at night to take a leak
the moon is above us.
A distant relation
the scent of sugar and cinnamon
then the cold gets colder.
December 23
There is always the same wrinkle
beneath each no.
Only they multiply
and deepen.
December 24
Each morning flocks of wild geese
head south.
We watch them, unmoving.
You get tired of looking up.
Soon enough we lower our heads.
December 25
The window brings in the sky
in little squares.
Everything is tormented
like the old women gathering radishes.
Even the stones.
Was Christ really born in a season like this?
December 27
There are four walls
I count them
I have five fingers
I count them too.
White sheet white Tuesday
white horse
muddy snow
I can’t find the number
I can’t decide.
December 29
I enter the forest
deeper in is the sleeping lion
I walk softly, a bird on my shoulder.
January 2, 1949
We take walks on the strip of road
that they designated ours
the old men play with their worry beads
up and down, up and down in the same place
we don’t move our hands
we move our heads
nodding to someone who never appears.
We haven’t befriended the clouds.
January 4
And suddenly
a memory of birds
that sank into the unknown.
January 5
The three lighted windows
in the closed-up house.
Was it ours once?
Everything is
like the light we miss.
January 6
The moon has
many unrented rooms.
That’s why, then?
That’s why.
January 8
I did everything by halves — he said;
leave me alone.
Remember.
My hands don’t listen to me.
I did everything by halves;
pity me.
Animals and chairs
have four legs.
I have one.
January 10
You have to tie your own hands.
You tie them.
Night cuts the cords.
January 12
Mirror, you at least
tell me,
does this spit suit my forehead?
January 13
Behind me the window
as if I’ve loaded a basket of flowers
onto my back.
Still?
Again?
Don’t think.
January 15
Step by step I besiege the black spot
I double the green of a leaf
I multiply a feeling of quiet
I use metaphors to transport
formerly elsewhere nowhere.
Suddenly I feel myself
besieged by the black spot.
January 18
Our house, you said. Which house?
Our house is over there
with the single bed
with the broom
with the unsuspecting poems
not yet torn.
January 20
He speaks
the most ordinary words in the world.
He who knows what goes on
under the stones
understands.
January 21
A cessation.
You’re not searching.
How nice it is tonight.
Two birds fell asleep in your pockets.
January 22
He rested his forehead
on the table with the bread
calm as a statue
between glory and death.
January 23
At last
the mirror shows you
your severed hands
though you have no hands to applaud
your victory.
January 24
I rested my mouth on your memory
I sat a vigil for pain and pleasure
between the four candles
of snuffed lines.
January 25
For a moment we took refuge
against the latrine wall.
The wind was cutting.
An old man stared at a cloud.
I looked at him smiling
in the light of that cloud — so peaceful,
so far removed from desire and pain –
I was jealous.
Old people agree with the clouds.
And it’s taking us a long time to get old.
January 26
I want to compare a cloud
to a deer.
I can’t.
Over time the good lies
grow few.
January 30
Night comes
hands in her armpits
into the soot of our fear
unspeaking.
All our suspicions were right.
The darkness hides nothing.
A bat came in through the window.
It doesn’t matter.
January 31
Mother night — he said;
wrap me in your black hair
riddled as I am by your stars
living the humiliation
of not being dead.
(He was talking to himself, face to the wall.
But he spoke clearly
perhaps hoping someone might hear.)
Concentration camp for political prisoners