the Destroyer is at work and scorching mankind.
People of standing are lost and cannot find their way
as after a battle without weapons or winners.
Even now, wearing her shackles and with the bloody nose
of a lover, I say, filled with her blossoming spring,
“Death, stop torturing the earth. Don’t wait, dear death,
for me to come, but follow her lead and strike hard!”
Envoi
My poems stand around yawning.
I’ll never get used to it. They’ve lived here
long enough.
Enough. I’m kicking them out, I don’t want to wait
until their toes get cold.
I want to hear the throb of the sun
or my heart, that treacherous hardening sponge,
unhindered by their clamour and confusion.
My poems aren’t a classic fuck,
they’re vulgar babble or all too noble bluster.
In winter their lips crack,
in spring they go flat on their back on the first hot day,
they ruin my summer
and in autumn they smell of women.
Enough. For twelve more lines on this page,
I’ll keep them under my wing
then give them a kick up the arse.
Go somewhere else to beat your drum and rhyme on the cheap,
somewhere else to tremble in fear of twelve readers
and a critic who’s asleep.
Go now, poems, on your light feet,
you haven’t stamped hard on the old earth,
where the graves grin at the sight of their guests,
one body piled on the other.
Go now and stagger off to her
who I don’t know.
from Sonnets [1986]
If my slight Muse do please these curious days,
The pain be mine, but thine shall be the praise.
I
That almost everything attains perfection
for just a little moment and then snuffs out
accords with both the world and Einstein’s theory.
And that people grow like plants
under a single polluted sky
and decay together equally in memory
is guaranteed by the selfsame time
that’s breathing down my neck.
That’s why I must now desperately
sing the praises of that one night
I saw you on display,
your youthful enchantment unparalleled,
a naked monument with full impunity,
toppling over before my sight.
III
I thought (I’m often such a swine):
I’ll wait until the winter comes
and carves its lines around her mouth,
or for deceitful spring to envy her
and dig deep trenches in the field of her skin,
then she, like me, will bear the signs.
But suddenly this fall arrived, hazy, bright,
confusing and as blessed as my late love
and you remained unharmed, my love.
I even dared to entertain the thought
that the cold inside of me might never reach you,
and that you will never leave my side,
in horror at my deep-freeze breath. I believed it.
The way a bleeding corpse might still believe.
XIII
Sometimes I pray for a speedy death,
knowing that things of value must always beg,
that follies flourish all around
and truth falls here on barren ground.
The missiles of a scandalous encampment
are celebrated.
The laws of a treacherous government
are decorated.
Virtue is exhausted.
Evil is the captain.
Adieu, my swamp of a land
I want to sink like a stone.
So why don’t I do it?
It is too soon to leave her here alone.
XIV
When the copper kettle with the ash
of what I was is shaken upside-down
above the patient grass, my love,
don’t stand there like a clown.
Wipe the mascara from your face
and think of the fingers that wrote these lines
in the days we ached for each other,
and stroked you when they were still alive.
And laugh at what I was, and don’t forget
the snoring in the cinema,
the underpants that kept on slipping down,
the stupid jokes and the lumbering gait
that always brought me back to you
to take you in your warm abundance.
from The Traces [1993]
The Traces
of the one who tripped over his bag
of the blind man and the treed cat
of her name in the snow
The traces
of a life that couldn’t be a work of art
of preoccupied
and suddenly mottled hands
and a bruised pancreas that same week
The traces
of loss but no carping about that
even the ivy loses its suckers
The traces
of his father’s coat that was once a tent
for him and his broken tomahawk
The traces
of Mozartkugeln, being such a sweet tooth,
even for Milchrahmensahmenstrudel
The traces
of the fire-brigade siren and 5 Megatons
over Antwerp and the vomiting rats
one hundred dead boy scouts in the cellar
around the corner
The traces
of golden children’s tears: the resin of the cypress
of the tortoise shot to pieces
The traces
of the one who praised fragmentation
even though he clung to simplicity
him with his basketful of answers
The traces
of the dead bodies he climbed over
the mossy statues he gripped tight
the sheep with their false teeth
The traces
in haste, in innocence too
as incongruous as that sounds
(he was a poet for a few years
but don’t ask when)
The traces
of goodbye of course
goodbye to Glenfiddich, toothache, sunglasses
strangers sobbing in bed
The traces
of the one who wasn’t present enough here
and remained unreconciled
in compassion too
The traces
of what was once a poem
mostly a comparison
and now a corpse of words
to one day thaw
The traces
of the one who specialised
in the sheepishness of love
because he saw that expectation in her eyes
The traces
of his singing saw
of a begging tomcat
of the collapsing plastic skeleton
of the sea finally without a murmur
Poet
Autumn. Listen. Clicking. Do you hear that deep clattering?
It’s coming closer: in our clothes, in our hair.