If There is Something to Desire (3 page)

Any housecoat would do,

but the seamstress cuts

the wedding gown

out of sea foam.

Come, undo my braid.

No sister’s foot can fit

Cinderella’s sandals

of cinders made.

I have brushed my teeth.

This day and I are even.

 … if necessary, the books shall be divided as follows:

you get the odd, I get the even pages;

“the books” are understood to mean the ones we used to read aloud

together, when we would interrupt our reading for a kiss,

and would get back to the book after half an hour …

A weight on my back,

a light in my womb.

Stay longer in me,

take root.

When you are on top of me,

I feel triumphant and proud,

as if I were carrying you

out of a city under siege.

Armpits smell of linden blossom,

lilacs give a whiff of ink.

If we could only wage lovemaking

all day long without end,

love so detailed and elastic

that when nightfall came,

we would exchange each other

like prisoners of war, five times, no less!

Man to woman is homeland.

Woman to man is a way.

How much way have you covered!

Dear, get some rest:

here is a chest, lean your head;

here is a heart, camp out;

and we shall evenly share

the dry residue of griefs.

Memory keeps nothing unnecessary

  or superfluous.

How much of your past

  am I still to go through?

Taking dreams for memories,

  I stroke the sleeper’s head.

A secret poll. The future

  comes in last.

Envy not singers and mimes,

do not ravish the ailing words.

The adjective
beloved

embraces all other adjectives,

verbs, nouns,

pronouns …

Poor Logos, naked and starved,

pining in admiration!

Inseparable: the parrot and its mirror,

Narcissus and his stream.

Here, I have made duplicate keys

to Eden, had the white dress altered.

Inseparable: Robinson Crusoe and Friday,

the dots in the umlaut,

me and you, my Sunday.

The serenade of a car siren

under a window gone dark.

Anything but betrayal!

Let us stop ears with wax,

tie the daredevil to the woman

as to a mast … The sleep,

restless and moist.

The arm goes numb.

Writing down verses, I got

a paper cut on my palm.

The cut extended my life line

by nearly one-fourth.

Teeth dull, veins collapsed,

heels worn down.

We are young as long as

our parents are young.

Dry is the riverbed where milk and honey,

white and amber, had run.

In the hospital, comb your mother’s hair,

clip the yellow nails.

Bathe me, birth me from foam,

cover me, swathe me in hugs.

Paradise is where

  nothing can ever change.

You’re crying? —No, a speck in the eye.

You’re crying? —No, too much reading.

Hell is where there is no way

  you can ever change.

You are, my dear,

a wall of stone:

to sing or howl

behind,

to bash my head on.

A tentative bio:

caught fireflies,

read till dawn,

fell in love with weirdos,

cried buckets of tears

for reasons unknown,

birthed two daughters

by seven men.

I walk the tightrope.

A kid on each arm

for balance.

Old age will come, will arrange books

in alphabetical order, will sort out photos and negatives.

With a head shake: “How meager the heritage of the most gifted.”

With a shrug: “Still, they must have done their best.”

Wrapping a shawl tighter: “Incredible: any man that comes along

can deserve the title ‘darling’!”

With a toothless grin: “How lovely they look now,

the rejected photos never put into albums!”

Not sheep coming down the hills,

not cracks on the ceiling—

count the ones you loved,

the former tenants of dreams

who would keep you awake,

once meant the world to you,

rocked you in their arms,

those who loved you …

You will fall asleep, by dawn, in tears.

Eyes of mine,

why so sad?

Am I not cheerful?

Words of mine,

why so rough?

Am I not gentle?

Deeds of mine,

why so silly?

Am I not wise?

Friends of mine,

why so dead?

Am I not strong?

A cake of soap, a length of rope,

a chair to hang socks on.

Death from depression seems

a bit ridiculous.

Starless is the abyss,

dark the water’s depth.

Too late for me

to have died young.

The sleeping are no mates for the crying,

the crying cannot judge those asleep.

How quickly you succumb to slumbers,

how blissfully, as I lie crying

next to you, hiding in the pillow

and saving for a rainy day

the lullaby to mourn the one

who had fallen asleep before I did.

“If you want, we can part with a smile,

or you can cry a little, if you want.”

The sole profession in the world

for men only: the executioner.

Has all been properly done:

the verdict duly announced,

the scaffold set nice and comfy?

Is the ax razor sharp?

I

am

the one

who wakes up

on your

left.

At last you and I are one,

together until the end.

Penelope’s cloth came in handy

for the wedding gown,

napkins, bedsheets, hankies,

with enough left for Odysseus

to make a sail.

A torture: writing a rough draft

of what came as a fair copy.

The milky wholeness is gone.

The waxy ripeness is here.

I take the accursed apple,

the one that deprives us of peace,

nibble on it, do not swallow,

keep the bite behind my cheek.

We lay down, and the pain let up.

We embraced, and the pain let go:

no more scalding regrets,

no scorching remorse

that oppressed the soul,

that weighed like a stone on the heart.

You, on top of me, heavy, immense,

and I, feeling so light.

A caress over the threshold

of sleep. Asleep? Half asleep?

We are ignorant of vice:

blind, entwined, content,

our bodies cling tight

to each other

without our knowledge,

ignorant of the evil.

Am I lovely? Of course!

Breathlessly I taste

the subtle compliment

of a handmade caress.

Chop me into tiny bits,

caress and tame my soul,

that godly swallow

you love to no end.

Where are we? On the sky’s

seventh floor. Above seven clouds

you are sewing the soul to the flesh

with strong manly stitches

that can neither be cut nor torn.

Inseparable, as you and I:

the light vibrant flesh,

the vibrant light soul.

Basked in the sun,

listened to birds,

licked off raindrops,

and only in flight

the leaf saw the tree

and grasped

what it had been.

The matted lashes sprinkled

with pollen from Eden’s tree.

Your face: the sun.

Mine: a sunflower.

The golden lies of May:

that nature favors me,

the sun is for me alone,

like a reading light on the plane.

Whenever I wish, I press

a button, and browse at will

through some worthless magazine

on a flight to you. And soon will land.

Pellets of sunburned skin,

a love bite from a gnat

next to my nipple. Eve’s dress

must have been sewn for me.

An ant clambers up my arm,

a dragonfly lands on my back …

Stocking up summer for winter,

I know: the supply will not last.

A lonesome crow

croaks in the dusk.

The wind and nettles play cards;

the deck is marked.

A drinking binge next door.

An old man in the drizzling rain

carries a coat to the dump:

a woman’s coat, warm, heavy cloth, hardly worn.

A box for useless scrap.

A compost dump.

A puddle covered with grates

filched from the graveyard.

A bunch of frisky guys

on the way to a dance.

A scarecrow crucified

for crows to laugh at.

Torment: the homeland.

Happiness: a foreign land.

Patriotism: a congenital trauma.

The tears of a drunken gent

calling out to a prostitute:

“Hey, mama!”

Her grimace.

Nostalgia: craving pain.

… went to the movies with classmates,

came home, found his mother

hanging in the hallway.

Picking a sleepy kid

off the potty at night:

the kid’s limbs

a foal’s,

a Christ’s,

long and scrawny

in the dim light.

A
Pietà.

Another poet came into being

when I saw the life of life,

the death of death:

the child I had birthed.

That was my beginning:

blood burning the groin,

the soul soaring, the baby wailing

in the arms of a nurse.

I think it will be winter when he comes.

From the unbearable whiteness of the road

a dot will emerge, so black that eyes will blur,

and it will be approaching for a long, long time,

making his absence commensurate with his coming,

and for a long, long time it will remain a dot.

A speck of dust? A burning in the eye? And snow,

there will be nothing else but snow,

and for a long, long while there will be nothing,

and he will pull away the snowy curtain,

he will acquire size and three dimensions,

he will keep coming closer, closer …

This is the limit, he cannot get closer. But he keeps approaching,

now too vast to measure …

He pissed on a firefly,

but the critter took wing

and alighted on my pants,

making me jump and scream,

afraid of catching fire.

No, no harm was done.

At the piano: my back to the world.

At the piano: behind a high wall.

At the piano: like going down into a mine,

or on a drinking binge, taking along no one.

Thought’s surface: word.

Word’s surface: gesture.

Gesture’s surface: skin.

Skin’s surface: shiver.

Against the current of blood

passion struggles to spawn;

against the current of speech

the word breaks the oar;

against the current of thought

the sails of dreams glide;

dog-paddling like a child, I swim

against the current of tears.

My craft is not stringing lyres

with sunbeams, nor weaving wreaths.

Patient cutting of facets

on tears unshed, that is my craft.

Not for the sake of a gleam in the eye,

but to leave a trace behind …

and truly royal will be the reward:

a chance to cry the heart out.

Cannot look at you when you eat.

Cannot look at you when you pray,

when you extricate your leg from your pants,

when you kiss and take me.

Cannot look at you when you sleep.

Cannot look at you when you are not here.

Cannot wait until you come home again

and after a prayer sit down to eat.

Wrinkles around the mouth

put it in parentheses.

Wrinkles in the corners of the eyes

put them in quotation marks.

Wrinkles across the forehead

crossed out the writing on it.

Wrinkles across the neck …

and the bridal veil of gray hair.

Who will winter my immortality

with me? Who will thaw with me?

Come what may, I shall never trade

the earthly love for the subterranean.

I still have time to turn

into flowers, clay, white-eyed memory …

But while we are mortal, my love, to you

nothing will be denied.