Broken of our bloody ways.
Stripped of female menace.
Only the fingernails
still glitter, scratch, and retract.
Do they know,
can they guess that they’re the last set of silverware
from the family fortune?
He’s already forgotten
he should flee us.
He doesn’t know the wide-eyed fear
that grabs you by the short hairs.
He looks as if
he’d just been born.
All out of us.
All ours.
On his cheek,
an eyelash’s imploring shadow.
Between his shoulderblades,
a touching trickle of sweat.
That’s what he is now,
and that’s how he’ll nod off.
Truthful.
Hugged by a death
whose permit has elapsed.
Born
So this is his mother.
This small woman.
The gray-eyed procreator.
The boat in which, years ago,
he sailed to shore.
The boat from which he stepped
into the world,
into un-etemity.
Genetrix of the man
with whom I leap through fire.
So this is she, the only one
who didn’t take him
finished and complete.
She herself pulled him
into the skin I know,
bound him to the bones
that are hidden from me.
She herself raised
the gray eyes
that he raised to me.
So this is she, his Alpha.
Why has he shown her to me.
Born.
So he was born, too.
Born like everyone else.
Like me, who will die.
The son of an actual woman.
A new arrival from the body’s depths.
A voyager to Omega.
Subject to
his own absence,
on every front,
at any moment.
He hits his head
against a wall
that won’t give way forever.
His movements
dodge and parry
the universal verdict.
I realized
that his journey was already halfway over.
But he didn’t tell me that,
no.
“This is my mother.”
was all he said.
Census
On the hill where Troy once stood,
they’ve dug up seven cities.
Seven cities. Six too many
for a single epic.
What’s to be done with them? What?
Hexameters bunt,
nonfictional bricks appear between the cracks,
ruined walls rise mutely as in silent films,
charred beams, broken chains,
bottomless pitchers drained dry,
fertility charms, olive pits,
and skulls as palpable as tomorrow’s moon.
Our stockpile of antiquity grows constantly,
it’s overflowing,
reckless squatters jostle for a place in history,
hordes of sword fodder,
Hector’s nameless extras, no less brave than he,
thousands upon thousands of singular faces,
each the first and last for all time,
in each a pair of inimitable eyes.
How easy it was to live not knowing this,
so sentimental, so spacious.
What should we give them? What do they need?
Some more or less unpeopled century?
Some small appreciation for their goldsmiths’ art?
We three billion judges
have problems of our own,
our own inarticulate rabble,
railroad stations, bleachers, protests and processions,
vast numbers of remote streets, floors, and walls.
We pass each other once for all time in department stores
shopping for a new pitcher.
Homer is working in the census bureau.
No one knows what he does in his spare time.
Soliloquy for Cassandra
Here I am, Cassandra.
And this is my city under ashes.
And these are my prophet’s staff and ribbons.
And this is my head full of doubts.
It’s true, I am triumphant.
My prophetic words burn like fire in the sky.
Only unacknowledged prophets
are privy to such prospects.
Only those who got off on the wrong foot,
whose predictions turned to fact so quickly—
it’s as if they’d never lived.
I remember it so clearly—
how people, seeing me, would break off in midword.
Laughter died.
Lovers’ hands unclasped.
Children ran to their mothers.
I didn’t even know their short-lived names.
And that song about a little green leaf—
no one ever finished it near me.
I loved them.
But I loved them haughtily.
From heights beyond life.
From the future. Where it’s always empty
and nothing is easier than seeing death.
I’m sorry that my voice was hard.
Look down on yourselves from the stars, I cried,
look down on yourselves from the stars.
They heard me and lowered their eyes.
They lived within life.
Pierced by that great wind.
Condemned.
Trapped from birth in departing bodies.
But in them they bore a moist hope,
a flame fuelled by its own flickering.
They really knew what a moment means,
oh any moment, any one at all
before—
It turns out I was right.
But nothing has come of it.
And this is my robe, slightly singed.
And this is my prophet’s junk.
And this is my twisted face.
A face that didn’t know it could be beautiful.
A Byzantine Mosaic
“O Theotropia, my empress consort.”
“O Theodendron, my consort emperor.”
“How fair thou art, my hollow-cheeked beloved.”
“How fine art thou, blue-lipped spouse.”
“Thou art so wondrous frail
beneath thy bell-like gown,
the alarum of which, if but removed,
would waken all my kingdom.”
“How excellently mortified thou art,
my lord and master,
to mine own shadow a twinnèd shade.”
“Oh how it pleaseth me
to see my lady’s palms,
like unto palm leaves verily,
clasped to her mantle’s throat.”
“Wherewith, raised heavenward,
I would pray thee mercy for our son,
for he is not such as we, O Theodendron.”
“Heaven forfend, O Theotropia.
Pray, what might he be,
begotten and brought forth
in godly dignity?”
“I will confess anon, and thou shalt hear me.
Not a princeling but a sinner have I borne thee.
Pink and shameless as a piglet,
plump and merry, verily,
all chubby wrists and ringlets came he
rolling unto us.”
“He is roly-poly?”
“That he is.”
“He is voracious?”
“Yea, in truth.”
“His skin is milk and roses?”
“As thou sayest.”
“What, pray, does our archimandrite say,
a
man of most penetrating gnosis?
What say our consecrated eremites,
most holy skeletesses?
How should they strip the fiendish infant
of his swaddling silks?”
“Metamorphosis miraculous
still lies within our Savior’s power.
Yet thou, on spying
the babe’s unsightliness,
shalt not cry out
and rouse the sleeping demon from his rest?”
“I am thy twin in horror.
Lead on, Theotropia.”
Beheading
Décolletage comes from decollo,
decollo means I cut off at the neck.
The Queen of Scots, Mary Stuart,
ascended the scaffold in an appropriate shift.
The shift was décolleté
and red as a hemorrhage.
At that very moment,
in a secluded chamber,
Elizabeth Tudor, Queen of England,
stood at the window in a white dress.
The dress was triumphantly fastened to the chin
and finished in a starched ruff.
They thought in unison:
“Lord, have mercy on me”
“Right is on my side”
“Living means getting in the way”
“Under certain circumstances the owl is the baker’s daughter”
“This will never end”
“It is already over”
“What am I doing here, there’s nothing here”
The difference in dress—yes, this we know for sure.
The detail
is unyielding.
Pietà
In the town where the hero was born you may:
gaze at the monument, admire its size,
shoo two chickens from the empty museum’s steps,
ask for his mother’s address,
knock, push the creaking door open.
You may tell her that you’ve just arrived from Poland.
You may bear greetings. Make your questions loud and clear.
Yes, she loved him very much. Yes, he was born that way.
Yes, she was standing by the prison wall that morning.
Yes, she heard the shots.
You may regret not having brought a camera,
a tape recorder. Yes, she has seen such things.
She read his final letter on the radio.
She sang his favorite lullabies once on TV.
And once she even acted in a movie, in tears
from the bright lights. Yes, the memory still moves her.
Yes, just a little tired now. Yes, it will pass.
You may get up. Thank her. Say good-bye. Leave,
passing by the new arrivals in the hall.
Innocence
Conceived on a mattress made of human hair.
Gerda. Erika. Maybe Margarete.
She doesn’t know, no, not a thing about it.
This kind of knowledge isn’t suited
to being passed on or absorbed.
The Greek Furies were too righteous.
Their birdy excess would rub us the wrong way.
Irma. Brigitte. Maybe Frederika.
She’s twenty-two, perhaps a little older.
She knows the three languages that all travelers need.
The company she works for plans to export
the finest mattresses, synthetic fiber only.
Trade brings nations closer.
Berta. Ulrike. Maybe Hildegard.
Not beautiful perhaps, but tall and slim.
Cheeks, neck, breasts, thighs, belly
in full bloom now, shiny and new.
Blissfully barefoot on Europe’s beaches,
she unbraids her bright hair, right down to her knees.
My advice: don’t cut it (her hairdresser says)
once you have, it’ll never grow back so thick.
Trust me.
It’s been proved
tausend- und tausendmal.
Vietnam
“Woman, what’s your name?” “I don’t know.”
“How old are you? Where are you from?” “I don’t know.”
“Why did you dig that burrow?” “I don’t know.”
“How long have you been hiding?” “I don’t know.”
“Why did you bite my finger?” “I don’t know.”
“Don’t you know that we won’t hurt you?” “I don’t know.”
“Whose side are you on?” “I don’t know.”
“This is war, you’ve got to choose.” “I don’t know.”
“Does your village still exist?” “I don’t know.”
“Are those your children?” “Yes.”
Written in a Hotel
Kyoto is fortunate,
fortunate and full of palaces,
winged roofs,
stairs like musical scales.
Aged but flirtatious,
stony but alive,
wooden,
but growing from sky to earth,
Kyoto is a city
whose beauty moves you to tears.
I mean the real tears
of a certain gentleman,
a connoisseur, lover of antiquities,
who at a key moment
from behind a green table,
exclaimed that after all
there are so many inferior cities
and burst out sobbing
in his seat.
That’s how Kyoto, far lovelier
than Hiroshima, was saved.
But this is ancient history.
I can’t dwell on it forever