I only pray that it will end.”
5
When he felt the first cold
in his pores and glands
he told parables to his contemporaries
and sang psalms for the poor.
Sometimes he stopped breathing
and said to his father, “I thirst.”
When the evenings grew shorter each year
he practised dying.
He only ever coupled
with his mother’s hat.
Ulysses
I have seen too many battles,
heard too many lovers’ howls,
I always travelled too far.
A diorama has replaced my eye,
a humming top my ear.
Too much mud,
too many corpses in it.
Too much joy.
I will now hide among the suitors,
those beggars.
A Kind of Goodbye
1
A snail trail. That’s all there is to say
that I came by, a Wednesday.
You don’t need to forget yourself,
others forget for you.
And yet: as dark as it was in my ferns,
as white as I once saw the sea,
as cowardly as I died and as often,
there can’t have been a single person.
Didn’t you see me?
Who’s coughing? It’s my throat, that’s all.
Really, no. — I never saw you.
5
They say you’ve blinded me.
Probably.
Although it’s mostly misty when I lunge
at the sound of your hissing
and often the wind from your mouth is cooling
as I kiss.
You said, “Let me be your whore,”
and I asked, “What does that make me?”
You said, “I’ll give you three guesses.”
I guessed: a moment,
a wish, a possibility.
And knew: a pilot light,
an attic full of rags,
yes, a festive hockshop.
And for the others, and there weren’t many,
a ground beetle
rummaging briefly in their hair,
an itch, hardly a breath.
Introibo
I should go in to you? To you, you sleepwalker?
To ask your forgiveness? Forget it.
Must I erase my sleeping sickness
with midnight masses?
I want no peace with you,
and no prayers to you,
I recognise no dear lord,
I’m not a servant anymore,
Even if I
could see you,
I would decline
your thorns, your thirst, your death, your stench.
Hecate Speaks
IX
Only the incomplete
makes me replete and fat.
Beauty is not harmony.
Most of it, I must forswear,
and all of it, allay.
My shadow is the only thing
that doesn’t make me shy.
Even if you take my arm,
even if you’re very warm,
even if I have no choice
beyond your fingers, nose and cheek,
even if my belly swells for you
even if you bring me in from the cold,
even if you shut your mouth,
even if I grow in your earth,
I still won’t let myself be caught,
between your gallows and garrotte.
Stay in your wood,
where people thrive.
I don’t want to walk there,
hawk there, be pushed underwater there.
I won’t surrender my shell,
my shadow, my husk.
XI
I hear with my little ear
something that I don’t hear.
Whoever wants to hear me
must speak with my mouth.
Who’s this? Me.
And you?
I see that you think
that I just screamed,
and you heard no sound.
I see that you hope
that I called
for help perhaps.
It was my throat,
it wasn’t me,
it was my playful voice box,
my sweetheart,
or my rutting grief.
But it, Father, was not me.
Not once in all the days of your life
will you know that kind of delight.
XIII
Saying I hoped to eventually make bird!
Crippled wings and all!
Saying I wanted to save myself
through mortification and lies!
I wanted indemnity,
I wanted distraction,
in my secure sick bay
full of shells from the old days
yesterday’s dressings
and tomorrow’s toe nails,
waiting for someone to come
and sew me back together
with gossamer, angel hair.
I’ve been spoilt in my tent of pain.
I believe I’m smiling.
from Almanac [1982]
ALMANAC
LIAR’S SACK
Tout homme digne de ce nom
A dans le coeur un serpent jaune
1
Begin this year in glory
and hear what the young father,
hoarse and red,
whispers to his first-born:
“Leave and dread.”
5
It’s fine for Dad to hit me
because Dad likes to
with his hand of hard wood.
If I was big and fat,
I’d do it too, if I could,
to a kid
who loves his dad as much as I do.
12
“If you get married, you’ll hit rock bottom,”
my mother said,
and I felt it at once, that layer of rock,
under the soles of my seven-league boots.
20
He slammed the door.
Never going back.
Not if she put him on a throne.
But by the time he crossed the tracks
he was tired and his feet were sore.
He thought, “No-one’s made of stone.”
22
— Just go away.
To your mother or something.
— There is no or something.
— To your mother then.
— She’s dead.
— Oh, poor thing. A long time now?
— Since before I was born.
24
A she-ape, but bald,
that’s what I call her.
It’s not exactly flattering,
but what can I do,
it happens to be true,
especially at three in the morning.