Powerless is speech.
Still, it bests a tear
in attempts to reach,
crossing the frontier,
for the heavy hearts
of my Polish friends.
One more trial starts.
One more Christmas ends.
CAFÉ TRIESTE: SAN FRANCISCO
To L. G.
To this corner of Grant and Vallejo
I’ve returned like an echo
to the lips that preferred
then a kiss to a word.
Nothing has changed here. Neither
the furniture nor the weather.
Things, in one’s absence, gain
permanence, stain by stain.
Cold, through the large steamed windows
I watch the gesturing weirdos,
the bloated breams that warm
up their aquarium.
Evolving backward, a river
becomes a tear, the real
becomes memory which
can, like fingertips, pinch
just the tail of a lizard
vanishing in the desert
which was eager to fix
a traveler with a sphinx.
Your golden mane! Your riddle!
The lilac skirt, the brittle
ankles! The perfect ear
rendering «read» as «dear».
Under what cloud’s pallor
now throbs the tricolor
of your future, your past
and present, swaying the mast?
Upon what linen waters
do you drift bravely toward
new shores, clutching your beads
to meet the savage needs?
Still, if sins are forgiven,
that is, if souls break even
with flesh elsewhere, this joint,
too, must be enjoyed
as afterlife’s sweet parlor
where, in the clouded squalor,
saints and the ain’ts take five,
where I was first to arrive.
THE BERLIN WALL TUNE
To Peter Viereck
This is the house destroyed by Jack.
This is the spot where the rumpled buck
stops, and where Hans gets killed.
This is the wall that Ivan built.
This is the wall that Ivan built.
Yet trying to quell his sense of guilt,
he built it with modest gray concrete,
and the booby traps look discreet.
Under this wall that (a) bores, (b) scares,
barbed-wire meshes lie flat like skeins
of your granny’s darnings (her chair still rocks!).
But the voltage’s too high for socks.
Beyond this wall throbs a local flag
against whose yellow, red, and black
Compass and Hammer proclaim the true
Masonic dream’s breakthrough.
The border guards patiently in their nest
through binoculars scan the West
and the East; and they like both views
devoid, as it were, of Jews.
Those who are seen here, thought of, felt,
are kept on a leash by the sense of Geld
or by a stronger Marxist urge.
The wall won’t let them merge.
Come to this wall if you hate your place
and face a sample of cosmic space
where no life forms can exist at all
and objects may only fall.
Come to this scornful of peace and war,
petrified version of either/or
meandering through these bleak parts which act
like your mirror, cracked.
Dull is the day here. In the night
searchlights illuminate the blight
making sure that if someone screams,
it’s not due to bad dreams
For dreams here aren’t bad: just wet with blood
of one of your like who’s left his pad
to ramble at will; and in his head
dreams are replaced with lead.
Given that, it’s only time
who has guts enough to commit the crime
of passing this place back and forth on foot:
at pendulums they don’t shoot.
That’s why this site will see many moons
while couples lie in their beds like spoons,
while the rich are wondering what they wish
and single girls eat quiche.
Come to this wall that beats other walls:
Roman, Chinese, whose worn-down, false
molars envy steel fangs that flash,
scrubbed of thy neighbor’s flesh.
A bird may twitter a better song.
But should you consider abortion wrong
or that the quacks ask too high a fee,
come to this wall, and see.
ALLENBY ROAD
At sunset, when the paralyzed street gives up
hope of hearing an ambulance, finally settling for
strolling Chinamen, while the elms imitate a map
of a khaki-clad country that lulls its foe,
life is gradually getting myopic, spliced,
aquiline, geometrical, free of gloss
or detail — be it cornices, doorknobs, Christ —
stressing silhouettes: chimneys, rooftops, a cross.
And your closing the shutters unleashes the domino
theory; for no matter what size a lump
melts in your throat, the future snowballs each «no»
to coin a profile by the burning lamp.
Neither because there is a lot of guilt
nor because local prices are somewhat steep,
nobody picks this brick pocket filled
with change that barely buys some sleep.
DUTCH MISTRESS
To Pauline Aarts
A hotel in whose ledgers departures
are more prominent than arrivals.
With wet Koh-i-noors the October rain
strokes what’s left of the naked brain.
In this country laid flat for the sake of rivers,
beer smells of Germany and seagulls are
in the air like a page’s soiled corners.
Morning enters the premises with a coroner’s
punctuality, puts its ear
to the ribs of a cold radiator, detects sub-zero:
the afterlife has to start somewhere.
Correspondingly, the angelic curls
grow more blond, the skin gains its distant, lordly
white, while the bedding already coils
desperately in the basement laundry.