ղľáԾ
Bright Cities
I.
The Summer is not going, it stays like inflammation on stuffy roads,
warm stone, no trace of steps (and yet humidity in the air);
wounds are not healing, the same movement every afternoon – to wipe
the dust from one´s eyes and the oil from hot wheels. October.
Not even return: continuance in crevices – the city doesn´t remember,
nor do you wish to: numb footsoles, chapped hands, why not admit –
Astrait, apassage, from behind the corner surfacing instead of (another)
memory, astreet. Another one. Identical.
And amadman on the platform, quite desolate
(no one is scared of him any more), change at Réaumur-Sébastopol:
on the very top aman is sleeping in his socks,
abandage sticking out of one, but hardly anyone dares cover his nose.
Behind the window without blinds someone gets deunk,
Quite solitary, behind awindow with ablind Ichange my make-up,
Idon´t air the place, Isilently invoke the telephone,
till finally Ifall asleep.
II.
Afinger code, noise, secret antrances, to be angry with oneself
for being (in the first moment) unrestrained, for being (in the second)
reasonable, and resent on´s loneliness – where´s the virtue in that?
From the point of view of eternity, it doesn´t mater whether in this
World, side by side with this body (or some other), from the momentary
Point of view: to choose emptimes. And wait.
An old woman, in fact rather mouldered than old, perhaps senile
and possibly bewildered for ages past, takes the lift up and down,
greets at great length, aloud, repeats „yes“, „yes“ over and over again,
addresses everone as „madam“, „sir“ with an assiduous smile,
and touches childrdnś cheeks with her fingers.
Apin in someone´s stomach, aword in eomeone´s heart:
quarantine, forty days of silence.
Aflame, cellophane, ascorhes image,
you infect the whole colony with yourself, and you´re surprised
when they condemn you.
III.
There are wooden houses, plastered or just stuck together with cloth,
carpets instead of walls, cables in the corners, dust in the joints
and the wind under the door.
Ajug kettle, amicrowave oven, ahot plate,
someone who sleeps,
not moving. He who follows meanders, not aware of the riverbanks
bare of green, indifferent to the pavement: who continues on
to where people ride camels
with knapsack on back,
where grey blocks of flats stand in the sand like asuburb,
only they are burning,
with tents below the Windows,
awaterless fountain and the sky in flames,
you want to go back to the river, there´s no way,
- not in the dream, and therefore nota t all –
You need only to open your eyes, run along the walls,
Burning carpets, acrid amoke,
Barefoot and apronless:
Those stairs
Are still there.
An Endangered Species
Photographs
1
Alandscape – amap.
Houses scatterad around
or quite washed away,
remmants of squares,
intersections with aperfect surface,
carefully drawn lanes,
black-white,
not atrace of blood,
an abandoned building site,
only the road is absorbed in mud
or mud licks up the road.
Alittle boy has lost interest,
dribbling the ball in another playground.
2
Thousands of springlets, streams, feeders
run on the rocks, gathering mass,
advancing, roaring,
and if you stumble,
first they go round you like apebble,
one actually halts or hold sup the stream,
others leap over, drag,
pass across,
trample down –
abit further,
downwards at aslant,
in the red heat
adingle drop slides through apipe,
falls on astone, rebounds, sizzles,
the other ones evaporate on the way –
arough and dry
little tongue
licks my hand:
more.
6
Alandscape – apostcard.
Containers, boxes,
the noses of houses dug into the soil.
In the giant cracks of pavements
only boards, papers and bricks
face the invasion of gatherers.
On avacant expanse two trees remained.
Heavenly peace
- or almost heavenly –
on acathedral without towers,
ruins standing on end like hairs.
7
We are watchmakers.
Me and my little son.
He has two alarm clocks. He says:
Iwant these two alarm clocks
to be next to each other.
This one will be Next to
and this one Each other.
To create the worôd from words.
From nothing:
8
Clenched jaws, tight lips –
words come anyway,
Iisue, flow,
and though the images sometimes break in upon speech,
in the end words rise from the stream again.
Ihave joints, move my fingers, articulate,
discover, grip:
an axe for the essence,
either exactitude – or silence.
9
Still lives – asmoking-room.
Asingle cable to connect the clock and the radio.
Below them at adepth, two arm-chairs, each from adifferent era,
and aunit table without an ashtray.
Li-up empty corridors,
aline of bright blue doors,
darkness just on the twenty sixth
and twenty eight floors.
Abit further on
areastaurant.
In the kitchen, permanently, the stoves stand
and the boiler hangs,
pans, pots, plates
covered with alayer of dust and flies´corpses,
even bats are lazing somwhere
in the corner: their post-mortem sprawl
makes them resemble dry leaves
or burnt toasts,
and finally in the dasement,
like an allusion to uncovered Pompeii,
on agrey-and-green carpet of dust
stretched,
two kittens turned to stone.
