…I knew he would never leave, things would never change.
All our losses are not accidental, they’re necessary.
You can’t escape from yourself, from your own grief,
from your own hate, from your own love.
You can’t change your memories or your dreams,
you can’t stop the shadows or the comets.
Things never change, they stay with us,
no matter how long we live or how we die.
Our night skies, our flocks of birds,
our rivers, our towns, our buildings:
no one will ever remember a thing about us,
no one will ever forgive us for anything we’ve done.
□ □ □
So I’m writing about her again,
about the balconies
and our conversations at home.
I remember what she
hid from me,
what she kept in between the pages
of that anthology with all those damned poets
who constantly spoiled
our lives.
“Last summer,” she said,
“something happened to my heart.
It started to drift, like a ship,
whose crew had died
of fever.
It moved deep within my breath,
caught by the currents,
attacked by sharks.
“I always said,
Heart, dear heart, no sails or ropes
will help you.
The stars are too far away
to guide us.
Heart, dear heart,
too many men
have signed up for your crews,
too many of them have stayed behind in British ports,
losing their souls
to the tears of the green dragon of alcohol.”
So I also
remember her legs, which I was ready
to fight for to the death,
and I repeat after her,
“Heart, dear heart,
sick with fever,
get well soon,
recover quickly,
so much burning love awaits us,
so many beautiful tragedies
hide from us on the open seas.
Heart, dear heart,
I am overjoyed to hear
you beat,
like a fox—
captured
but never tamed.”
□ □ □
The princess wears
orange clip-on earrings
and carries a dark bag
filled with treasures.
Sometimes she likes to tell us,
“This is makeup my father
bought me. These cigarettes
I took from my older sister.
My mother left me
this silver jewelry she wore
till she died.”
“And this,” I ask, “who’s in this photo?”
“My girlfriends,” she answers,
“they really hate me for my
golden hair and black underwear,
which none of them have.
My friends are ready
to tear me to pieces
for all that summer sultriness
that heats up in my
heart.”
What is the point of poetry?
To write about what everyone already knows.
To talk about things we are deprived of,
to voice our disappointments.
To speak and provoke
anger and love, envy, hatred,
and sympathy. To talk
under the moon
hanging above us, with all its
yellow reflections looming down.
Every grown woman
has this,
this sweet melody,
which you can only hear
when her heart begins to break,
which can only stop
when you’ve broken her heart.
□ □ □
This fox
howls at the moon all night
and avoids my traps,
acting like nothing happened,
like nothing concerns her.
Once the jewelry she wore
around
her neck
grew in value.
The blanket in which she wrapped herself
was a field of sunflowers
in which birds
found stray seeds
of tenderness.
When she grew angry,
rage rose in her veins,
like sap moving up a rose stem.
When you’re in love it is most important
not to believe what’s said.
She yelled, “Leave me alone,”
but really meant,
“Tear out my heart.”
She refused
to talk to me,
but was actually refusing
to exhale.
As if she were trying to make things worse
for me than they actually were.
As if our biggest problem
was the air
we breathed.
□ □ □
I ask her,
“What are you drawing all the time?”
“These are men,” she answers, “and these are women.”
“Why are your women always crying?”
“They cry,” she replies, “for the wind,
which was hidden in their hair;
they cry for the grapes harvested,
which tasted tart in their mouths.
And no one—neither men in clothes smelling of smoke,
nor children with golden scorpions
of disobedience in matchboxes,
can make them feel better.”
The love of men and women
is the tenderness and helplessness we receive,
a long list of gifts and losses,
the wind tossing your hair in May.
Oh, how hard it is to rely on the one
you trust, and how easy it is to be disappointed
in the one who touches your lips at night.
Some things are whimsical and invisible,
no matter how you color them,
they will always stay the same:
a star hangs above you,
the air roils with warmth.
So much light is hidden
in every woman’s throat,
so much trouble.
□ □ □
The best things this winter
were her footsteps in the first snow.
It’s hardest for tightrope walkers:
how can they retain their balance
when their hearts pull to one side?
It would be good to have two hearts.
They could be suspended in the air,
they could hold their breath,
as they closely examine
the green jellyfish in the snow.
The best things this winter
were the trees covered with birds.
The crows looked like telephones
used by
demons of joy.
They sat in the trees, and trees in winter
are like women after breakups—
their warm roots intertwined
with cold roots,
stretching into the dark,
needing light.
It would be good
to teach these crows songs
and prayers, to give them something
to do on damp
March mornings.