Running sentences
(For Renata)
“Come.”
I can hear you but I am so far away…
(…I am Columbus on the foredeck, listening to the sound of an unfamiliar surf. Seagulls draw lazy circles in the sky. I think of all the things that are so far away from here and from this moment:
the carts that moaned under the weight of timber, the many new and ugly, empty spaces in the forest; the horses and the men who collapsed during this transformation from living wood into these mighty ships; the begging letters and the long months of waiting for a royal decree; the recruiting and press-gang of sailors, the many holy masses and processions; the last confession.
I think of all the things that do not matter anymore. I am that stray message that somehow arrived; the camel that unexpectedly and undeservedly easily jumped through the needle’s eye. I am Columbus and a whole new world is waiting…)
“Come now.”
By the light of my monitor, at the open window, all I can see and all I touch comes in the form of prayer. Outside, the stars are drilling deep holes into the night. Yellow-eyed trams rattle the gates of this sleepy, stone town. All sounds - all of the outside world - now seem so far away, and almost inconceivable. The trees in the courtyard, where the bird’s nests are waiting for spring, shiver and creak like masts, tied to a fleeting image, to a ship that dreams of sailing for new worlds. My fingers on the keyboard move in a silent staccato, always reaching for you - always searching for new words to tell you what your smile has known for all these years:
The night is a fever of stars,
each sound a train,
a sweet, birth-sweat whisper:
there, and there, and there…
(And here: my body,
darkening,
still,
a waiting for you.)
Ah. Useless. It always is. My words will never be enough, or even close to what I want to say. Why can’t I, like Robert Graves, tell you ‘with half-words whispered low’ what you really mean to me - how all my dreams reside in you?
I’m lucky though: you don’t demand perfection. You trust me with your body, your waking days, your dream-filled sleep - and you know me. You know me so well.
“Come.”
For a few moments longer I sit there in my chair, by the open window, hunched over my keyboard, brooding and resentful as a God, who stumbled over the husks of words that were meant to shape a universe.
“Come here.”
Then my fingers dance like crazy sparrows, while you slowly stretch, your shadow lazily reaching for me. Ah, still no good…; but before I delete all the nonsense that I wrote, before I take off my ego and put it it on the shelf for now, before I find myself and all that I hold dear back in your arms again, I say:
“Enough; enough already. I have outrun all of my sentences.”
You laugh, and you whisper, for the last time - so sure and with the quiet perfection of a Chopin nocturne:
“Come here.”
The next morning you kiss me awake. Your hands stroke my hair. I hesitate on the border of two perfect continents. Now, to die in this momentous bliss or bury myself alive in your warm and welcoming flesh? Yet then, in that half-way moment, the words rise again and fill me. Absurd and naked I jump out of bed and search for pen and paper. You laugh - with the soft roar of leopard in your throat, but also forgiving. After all, you know me so well.
“Now what?” you ask, quite indulgently.
I wave myself and our bed and your glorious, naked body impatiently away. You start to hum the theme song of the Twilight Zone.
Ten minutes later I’ve returned to earth and I crawl back into bed. You look at me with the half-closed and tolerant eyes of a big mother cat. I kiss you on your still sleepy, night-coloured, half-swollen lips. Much later, at the breakfast table, you read what I wrote for you - what earlier, for just a moment, had seemed to be so right, so perfect even. I read over your shoulder and now, as always, I’m disappointed and dissatisfied with the result:
Opening my veins,
these words spill out.
Warm and wet,
all surface true,
they stick to paper,
walls and ceiling.
Such simple graffiti:
I love you, love you, love you
and I need you here with me.
You destroy a last piece of toast, take another sip of tea and then again you comprise all that exists for me into one single word:
“Come.”