I would love you,
in wild despair
and silence.
In groves of unborn trees
and ghostly fruit,
I would love you.
I would love you,
in a breath of Gods,
a wake of lovers.
Mourning for the sight
of moments passed,
I would love you.
I would love you,
all of me undone -
all grieving for your touch.
I would love you,
for the light and flesh
that I once entered.
The nails of the tree scrape the window at night.
The clouds are keeping very still
and the face of the moon
will soon fill out
with promises of angry blood.
Cats fight in the dark
over souls that dared not seek new territories.
Like mice they flee and are disassembled.
In bedrooms blankets are the key
to a safe passage through the dark:
tucked in - do not show the naked skin.
Beast and ghoul cannot devour you
if soft sheets cover all of you.
The lukewarm air is now so still
that you could almost be forgiven to forget
that in the next few seconds
it will be inhaled again by night -
and all your thoughts
and hopes and dreams
sucked quietly
into its humid mouth.
The night’s so ravenous and still,
dressed in a million breathing corpses,
waiting for the magic of new light.
The nails of the tree scrape the window.
It’s not exactly a tattoo of hope
but it’s all you’ve got now
to remind you of the soil
where all will come and gather in the end.
Enola Gay,
deliver us from madness.
Cleansing fire from Heaven,
take our Sodom hearts
and our Gomorra tongues -
and make us pay.
For we have sinned;
oh, how we’ve sinned
against our jealous Lord.
Tear up the Covenant:
we are not worthy of the rainbow
and Your light.
Send us Your son,
Your only child:
Enola Gay,
deliver us Your Little Boy.
Engulf us in Your flames,
for we have sinned.
For R.
It’s four in the morning. The square is empty; the snow lies untouched. I see your breath: a white glow that almost enfolds me. Your hand warms my hand. I look up, from the green-moulded statue of Jan Hus, past the chimneys on the rooftops and the spires of the cathedral, to the low sky that slowly breaks under the weight of stars. I whisper my ‘I love you’ through the deep and almost holy silence of this winter night.
So full of you, so full of this strange and beautiful night, I feel like I am tip-toeing closer, maybe too close to the loadstone of the world:
I am the colony of half-feral graveyard cats, a few blocks from where we live. I’m the squirrels sleeping in their trees that guard the graves. I am the slow, weighted movement of all the tower clocks of Prague. I am the sound of trams and ambulance.
I am the reeking derelicts, half-frozen in the alleys – and the young Ukrainian hookers in their low-cut summer dresses, giving blow jobs for two Euros in public lavatories. I am the laughter and the jukebox and the sound of glasses spilling out of the pub, whenever someone enters or leaves.
For this one strange moment I am this whole angel and monster soaked city. I carry all the centuries and all the tired stones of Prague inside my head, my lungs, my heart.
Four in the morning – the square still empty – and now soot, like the ashes of burnt-out stars, falls softly on the snow. The smell of blackening, burning flesh hangs on the branches of winter trees. Before my eyes Jan Hus is burning. Next to him Jan Palach raises a jerrycan. Men with swords, men in priests’ robes slowly transform into hammer and sickle and tanks. The night is an open grave. Everything that ever was is now an indictment of all that followed.
“What’s wrong?” you ask.
I close my eyes in a free fall moment. I feel my heart moving like a lamp in the mast of a storm-held ship.
“Ah…”
Devils roast doves. Strange Gods break open graves. Insanity and loathing rise up from the throats of sewers in black tidal waves.
“Ah.”
I’m sinking. You hold me. You whisper now – concerned, but also strong; so strong, so self-assured, as only a woman can be: certain of her love, and of her strength.
“Look at me.”
Just for a moment longer the skeletons dance. For a few more heartbeats the cancer rides me. Then the square is just a square again. The night feels as safe, and intimate as your hand that still rests in mine. I whisper - like a penitant, a midnight mass, a revelation:
“God, I love you.”
You laugh: relieved but not in the least surprised. You open your coat (you open my heart) and you hold me, for a moment and forever, close to you – and I, I am like Rick, the king of his café, while the Marseillaise plays: Casablanca with a happy ending. And you, you are Chet Baker – the trumpet: unearthly beautiful, almost too much for me to hold.
It’s four in the morning. The old square lies empty. The clouds have conquered the sky for the moment and the snow dances, flutters and falls. The city is merely city again, a breathtakingly beautiful set piece for all our dreaming.
I will try to remember the half-frozen derelicts, the shivering, young hookers, the squirrels and graveyard cats – all of them can have a place in my heart. The despair and loathing though, the arrogance which like a perverted Saviour or spoilt Dali sits on the top of the Mount of Skulls as on a throne; the dumb drum beat of doubt and fear that turn to madness, when love threatens solitude: enough of that – no, never again that senseless void.
For yes, I love you – and you hold me.
And yes, it is still so very hard for me to trust and to believe that you have chosen me, that you are here with me. So, bear with me – forgive me, please. I am still learning to trust my senses.
A few minutes later we’re standing on Charles’ bridge. Below us the sleeping swans; above us the low, snow-dressed sky. Prague yet again the dream that brought us together and will never leave us, wherever we go. The sleepy water of the Vltava whispers round the pillars of the bridge, like your hand holds my hand, like your breath enfolding me.
Too numb now for poetry and clever phrases, I hold on to you. There’s only one whisper, shaping my world:
“Renata…”
You smile.
Rebirth is a bitch. It hurts like Hell and it would be quite simply the most humiliating thing that could ever happen to a person, were it not for the fact that it gets worse with each new incarnation. There is, quite frankly, nothing worse than being reborn.
What was that you said? Death? You think death must be worse? Ah, thank you, child: it’s been a long time since I even came close to smiling. No, death is easy - and it’s a pity it can’t last.
So, you’ve just died - again. It may have been quick, like a heart attack or a bullet through the head. Or it may have been miserably slow: cancer, Alzheimer, watching American Idols. Hm? No, I didn’t say that dying was fun…It’s just that being reborn is much, much worse. Do pay attention, please.
Anyway, when you die all of you gets scrunched. I don’t mean your body but your essence. Imagine a soft drink can. The can is filled with all of your memories, conscious and unconscious; all the things you tasted and saw and heard; the things and people you loved, or hated. You call this filled soft drink can your soul. Which is as good a lie as any of the other weird stuff people tell themselves. Now, imagine a fist - a very strong and hairy fist. It’s scrunching the soda can. As I said: not nice. Happily, it goes very, very quickly.
Rebirth doesn’t come with a big hairy fist. It’s much more twiddly than that; much more messy too. The newly born creature, animal or vegetable, also needs one of those soft drink cans, in order to store its essence. Only problem is, before that can happen the old can needs to be un-scrunched - and that, subjectively speaking, takes a very painful eternity. What makes this process infinitely worse yet is the fact that during the un-scrunching this twisted and pathetic soft drink can remembers all the other times that this has happened to it. So, the more incarnations you have gone through, the more insufferable the entire process becomes.
The only good thing you can say about this whole sorry system is that the victims don’t carry this information with them while they live their short lives and while they are filling those soft drink cans again and again and again.
Hm? Ah, good question, yes. The first good question, in fact. How do I know about all of this…? Well, I’m not one of you, strictly speaking. You could call me a demon, if you like. Like ’soul’ it’s a reference you can understand - or misunderstand, to be honest. It will do though.
So, what happens was, I answered a certain classified ad: ‘Don’t be desk bound! See the world! Be your own boss…’ Etcetera, etcetera. I fell for it; oh, how I fell for it. I signed the contract, accepted all the terms - including the one that said I could not join a union, or quit…; and that’s how I became a comptroller. I work the line, so to speak. Management always want to know if all the systems are working.
So, yes, that’s me: a bloody soft drink test can.
Just like any one of you I get born again and again and again - and yes, I also die again and again and again - and get reborn again and again and again…; and because I have to report back to Management, I get to remember all the bloody and extremely painful details: all of them, yes, again and again and again and again and again… Well, you get the drift, I’m sure.
Of course, there are some small compensations. Right now, for instance, I’m swimming in a bowl, with another damn fish. Yes, I’m currently a fish. What kind of fish? How the Hell should I know? I’m inside the bloody thing, so I don’t have a clue. Fish are not born thinking, ‘Wow, I’m a halibut - how fascinating!’ What I do know is that the other fish is weird. It’s always hanging upside down, against an awful-looking bit of greenery. Don’t ask me why - and it’s almost always asleep.
Not that I care about the other fish. I am much more interested in the view - and what a view it is. It’s my mistress, I presume. The one who feeds us and talks to us, and sometimes sings to us. (When she’s not walking into walls, that is. She is incredibly beautiful and all but also rather clumsy, I’m afraid.)
She also falls off the couch, laughing like a loon, whenever she watches Borat - and she spends too much time in the gym… Well, I didn’t say she was perfect - but she comes pretty close, mind you. The most beautiful part though is that she really, really likes clothes - she’s got tons of them and she likes to put them on just for the sheer fun of wearing them and seeing how they look on her; and she does look lovely in all of them (apart from an old and tattered, red & white & polka-dotted pair of pajamas. They look awful but for one reason or the other she seems to really adore them.)
Anyway, I love looking at her, when she’s parading through the room again, in ever changing outfits (and occasionally walking into walls, or stumbling over a pair of high-heeled shoes…) Of course, the part I really enjoy is when she undresses again, to change into yet another lovely dress or, pure bliss, one of her many, many swimsuits… Like the one she’s wearing right now.
Yes, I have to admit, there are compensations for all the discomfort and all the pain that comes with being reborn - and watching my mistress in that sexy bathing suit of hers… the one she will take off again any moment now… Yes. now that’s, as they say, to die for.
Ah…! Yesss…! There she goes. That’s one shoulder strap… Encore, encore…!
But…
No, no, no, no, no…
Watch that bloody shoe box…
No…!
No, no, no, NOOOOOOO…!!!
Oh, bloody, bloody, bloody Hell! How bloody clumsy can you bloody well bloody get…??!! You broke my bloody bowl, you stupid, stupid girl…!
Ah shit…!
Here comes that hairy fist again…
Bye bye, babyyyaaaaaiiiiiiiiyyyeeeeecccchhhh…. .
No suffering is unimportant.
There is no greater good;
no units more important
than the individual soul.
Not need.
Need is a myth invoked to tell us
there are ends to meet,
that disregard the others.
Not love (not necessarily.)
What most of us call love
is too self-centred to be trusted
and too vain.
It can’t be fear.
It can’t be hope, whispering
its stories in the night
but disregarding now.
The only thing I know:
Heaven can’t be reached,
while one child cries from hunger,
dies from thirst.
No suffering is unimportant.
There is no greater good;
all dots are equally important
on that pointed line into infinity.
In slow, slow motion the stick comes down:
a man lies bleeding in the street.
Soon the blood will stop its desperate running.
It’s not a sight or sound uncommon to the city.
Cars go by and sirens call for witnesses,
who need not carry red-striped canes
to tell the cops they didn’t see a thing.
No angels coming down to fetch the body.
Someone called the press.
Two rookie journalists are talking to a priest,
who stopped for a few moments
but has nothing much to say.
The priest is in a hurry.
He needs to lock the church doors for the night.
Faith is keeping office hours now
and God ain’t into house calls anymore.
Then the ambulance is gone.
The blood is wiped away.
Life of a sorts goes on.
Somewhere in the city food gets cold
to a cop’s wife’s lonely curses.
1
The lone bird flies too high
to cast a shadow on the land.
The desert down below lies still,
lies simmering.
A stone clad in a haze of white and heat
leans into a wind that doesn’t show.
2
The branches of the tree hang low
and almost touch the river.
A stone breaks through
the surface of the stream.
Diamond-fractured, reaching
for the evening light, it glistens.
That evening,
the shadow of the olive tree
came down from the hill,
where bits of cork
and crumbs of bread
were carried away by ants.
Our revenant embraces,
knotted and dry as wood,
flickered in the ashes of some fire.
Places to go (a chorus whisper)
places to go -
in haste and time.
That evening,
the olive branch was swaying in the wind.
Ants ate the carcasses of doves.
(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.”
Just in this moment - not looking at you
I can see the things that I would love to do:
to kiss a naked shoulder,
touch and tremble - trembling lips:
my lips would never be
at home with yours.
Forever strangers,
they would meet
in moist, exotic places.
So easy, again,
to get carried away -
so Goddamn easy.
Not looking at you
I can see everything -
but let’s forget all lust.
Let us be friends.
I want you - yes,
that much is obvious:
I want you -
but I also want your trust,
for you to be at ease with me.
That’s hard - too hard
at times, I know
but I’ll keep trying.
(Things I’ll never say. Things I’ll never do…)
I’ve seen your nipples through a T-shirt.
I would not even care to touch
upon such a common observation,
but for the ease of shivering lust,
raised blood, raised hairs and me.
These are (unclean, unclean)
the unsaid and unthought things:
your eyes so amazed -
your eyes forever in awe.
I saw my praying eyes so many times
in your enlarging pupils;
your tongue, your teeth,
so fucking perfect
in their smelly, unmade bed
of breathing flesh;
your breath like waves
all over me.
(Things I’ll never say; things I’ll never do.
Things that will not matter much to you.)
Unsaid, unthought - unclean
but I know guilt.
For I still want to set my teeth
into your lower lip;
Your nipples swollen now
against my chest -
my breath, now moving
like the hull of some old ship;
your fingers crying for a tune,
hammering and groping for my flesh.
Oh yes, I know of guilt.
Not of these innocent pleasures;
not of the needful flesh
but of the hurt to others,
to your friend - to all our friends
who wouldn’t understand.
(And yet, what can I do?
I know what I must do: I must be silent.)
That is easy - easy as all sinking ships must
move beneath the waves.
Easy yes - but still I want you.
These unsaid, unthought things still haunt me.
I know the strings of guilt and lust.
Oh yes, my friend,
I do know lust.
(The picture accompanying the poem I found on this site.)
Ink becomes crude oil;
my thoughts like seagulls,
coated in this thick black waste.
What makes it
so damned hard
to say I love you?
Fuck the seagull and the sea,
the tanker split and bowing
like a dream come true.
(Now would be the perfect time
to quote a bit - give rein: well-educated
and performing to the needs of poetry.)
Fuck that; I love you -
and besides: piss stinks.
You can try and hide it with chemicals,
called Brook or Woods or Tropical Fruit.
All to the sound of violins
but piss still stinks.
Love cannot be coated,
cannot be guarded well.
It’s kind of ugly in its need;
It’s kind of fearsome
in its greed.
It is not nice.
So fucking beautiful its shell:
the soft flesh open
to all kinds of Hell.
And yet, so fucking beautiful
these simple words:
I love you.
Our hearts like flocks of gulls
(the white of feathers, torn from waves)
all noise and desperate flight.
We are winged orphans of the sea,
caught between the tides
of love and isolation,
where all is hunger,
all is fear - and all
the blinding white of hope.
The elders were inside, deep down in their bunkers. They couldn’t bear to watch the sky during this week. However broad and deep this new sky was, all eyes would always travel to that one small pinpoint of bright light: the latest star to join the endless, silent choir of night’s bright passengers.
The children called this new arrival ‘The Cradle’.
The elders couldn’t bear to watch it, or think about it, or call it by its older name. Those who had survived the Days of Reckoning and had survived the journey, stayed deep under the ground and tried not to remember.
Outside, a new and fearless generation watched the sky. They smiled. They remembered.
Not the days of old. None of them had lived through those days. A few of them had been born on board the handful of ships that had made it to this new home - but most of them had never known another place, another environment. None of them shared the grief of the elders.
“Almost” one of the children whispered; “Almost time now.”
Inside their bunkers, the elders did their slow and grievous dying, second by second, hour by hour, day by day. None of them had truly survived the Days of Reckoning - not in any meaningful sense of the word. They only seemed to go forward in time but they did not. The past’s strong gravity was slowly claiming them as its last victims. They were dying - and they knew that they were dying, and they did not care.
Outside, the children were waiting impatiently for the dance to begin.
“Why are they so sad?’ one of the youngest asked.
“Because they’re stupid.” another child answered.
The rest of them laughed at this. Most shook their heads in quiet bemusement. It was stupid. It was a beautiful day, on a beautiful world. A world not touched by old wars, old hunger, old evils.
“But they gave us these!” one of the older children said, stretching her arms and raising them as high as she could.
The others followed her example.
“Yes!”
“Yes!”
“Yes!”
Inside their bunkers, deep under the ground, the elders sat silently. They didn’t need to see that bright new star to feel its weight, its intolerable weight, upon their shoulders. They were slowly dying and if they still could have felt any of the normal, old emotions, they would have felt glad to do so. This was not their world and they had no future here. So, they were returning to a past, however dark it may have been. The past was theirs and they would reclaim it in the only way left to them - by dying slowly, second by second, hour by hour, day by day.
Outside, the children had begun to dance. A solemn dance: a dance of mourning. Even if they didn’t feel the grief, they did want to honour their parents. The elders who had given them these wings, that now grew from their shoulders - forever part of them, forever part of this new world.
While the elders hid inside their bunkers, their children flew and danced upon the air of this new, and forgiving, and much lighter world. They flew; they danced; they sang their solemn songs - and they ignored the newest star, that burnt so brightly: the place the elders, before the Days of Reckoning, had called Earth.
It is the night, the silent shroud that calls
upon these images of soldiers,
locked in trenches,
waiting for the order to arrive,
tomorrow or tomorrow:
to rise and leave the safety
of the dull and horrid clay,
the company of the newly dead,
and join the screaming and the silent;
those who were hung on the barbed wire
or lie half-drowned, half-frozen
in the gas-filled craters.
When history seeps through
but not explains itself in dreams,
through the breach of night,
when Ypres and the fields of France
become the words that now unleash the dark,
and all our fears and strange desires:
to be there, out among the dying and the dead;
to taste this fear and die one night -
alone and screaming - die another,
in the company of men, who die
in their hundreds, within seconds.
Die in a sea of screaming red and then
to rise again in dreams like these -
where death is but a fever,
a memory half-sought;
a testimony of sorts,
to be forgotten in the morning,
when the birds set off the dawn
and the street wakes up to the sound of cars,
to the walking order of the day -
when the soldiers lie forgotten,
like the graves and statues
that must try to keep the dark alive,
as a murmur, as the waves -
and as I rise, and now walk slowly to the kitchen
and that first quick cup of tea,
to the shower then, to wash my hair,
and feed the cat;
to do the things to do with living,
the trenches die again;
the dead lie silent.
The past no longer beckons.
There are thoughts of you,
your body, as my body now recalls it,
next to mine.
The way your life now holds most of my dreams
(but for those soldiers dying,
lost, forgotten -
merest shades,
vague recollections)
all of my stories and my daily, fleeting life.
My heart for now restored to this,
to me, to you;
my body moving through the early day.
All is, again, this moment,
the silence of these new beginnings:
the love and touch and whisper
of our wakening clay.
The knife can’t ask for love.
The mountain rises,
yet the altar and the lamb
lie silent.
I offer you my voice, my reason;
the fires and the flesh and all
the years and blood and memories
it took to build a soul.
I come to you.
I offer love.
I come to you
in silence.
The pubs are mostly closed by now,
the Prinsengracht all but deserted;
bicycles well locked or casually disposed of.
Stolen this last night, tomorrow the police will take them,
sell them off next month:
recycling’s just another game.
A February rain,
so cold it feels like fireflies stinging:
every breath and every word a comic strip balloon,
torn apart by harpies’ wings;
the cobble-stones, softly coated now with freezing film.
Extremities are numb.
Amsterdam, more than a city -
not destroyed by bombs but maimed severely
by eighties yuppy architects:
a hooker that’s grown careful,
no longer so outgoing,
no longer so convinced of immortality.
No stars tonight: sky hanging low -
though Heaven is no closer.
The Prinsengracht, quiet as a requiem;
and pock-marked and still:
the old canal, covered with white,
whispering ghost stuff.
Lying in bed and thinking of you,
honouring some old agreement
with some deity of hope,
I do not even touch myself:
I lie awake, laid out like a corpse -
not really waiting;
hardly aware of slowly leaking breath;
not really thinking of the flesh
that I refused tonight.
(This is my body; this is my blood.)
Not in the mood for sacrament I was polite:
I’m sorry, my sweet stranger, not tonight.
In a fourth floor bed,
close to the February sky
(still far removed from Heaven)
I think of you and counting camels winking at me
with their needle eyes and locked or stolen bicycles:
small February fever stuff but then -
then the ceiling is a mirror,
made from splinters that I salvaged
from a thousand garbage-cans,
glued with blood from fingertips,
glued to the smoke of dreams -
and suddenly I feel breathtakingly alone.
Ghosts of Ice Age flowers
drip from night-dressed windows.
Sirens in the street proclaim the living
are still chasing the dead.
My heart won’t stop though - no,
not this time anyway.
The pubs are opening by now.
The Prinsengracht is as of yet deserted.
A February rain turns into snow:
a miracle as minor, as flesh and blood,
touched by religion;
the sky still low - no closer to Heaven.
If love was enough or wanting;
if words were enough or deeds;
if despair could be translated or distiled -
if love was enough or contagious…
(A dirge of crib death angels, melting on my window,
singing Adam’s blues: calling upon you.)
Dreaming’s not enough
and explanations only painful.
Faith is for all the tourists,
off to Heaven in a little row-boat.
Back to the city though that spawned me,
the only thing I know:
that I was born of woman,
there and then -
a mother who abandoned me at birth
and left me there,
to be picked up by strangers,
as if I had not happened.
Leaving me with nothing
but some questions:
Was she raped, or careless;
touched by incest or a stranger’s lure?
Stupid questions:
I will never know what happened.
Back to the city -
to this place of birth:
the only place I know is mine.
Not important in and of itself
but I like all symbols, all Hermetic stuff:
the roots I cannot claim.
Back to the city:
February feelings - Amsterdam a shell,
where memories I do not have
are like so many bicycles,
well locked or casually abandoned, stolen.
(At times not thinking is all that I can do.)
But still I can forgive -
if that’s not too presumptuous.
Even if I have no rights to judge
or to condemn, I do forgive;
even if that’s not enough,
but let’s get back to more demanding issues:
Lying in bed, watching my blood
working its way through cracks of mirrors I collected,
built from scrap.
Lying in bed, counting to nothing,
thinking of you -
thinking of you and Amsterdam,
I realise at last I have a choice of February symbols:
feeling locked out, lying abandoned -
or like these low skies slowly reach
and take my feeble chances
for some, almost forgotten
but soft-whispering need of Heaven.
Torn from the dark
and delivered to reason,
the child, dressed in blood,
now is turned to the light
and explodes into tears,
and it howls.
Torn from the dark,
from the thorns of the stars,
and the top of this hill
I can suddenly see
this vision of silk and soft flesh,
made of longing.
Torn from the dark
and delivered to you,
all my senses explode.
I am healed; I am shaped.
I am forged:
in lust, and in love, and in laughter.
First came the wind, carrying the smell of spices.
The boy, still asleep, saw his grandmother, standing in the kitchen, while she bruised the roasted cardamom and other seeds in the mortar, adding olive oil, then thyme and rosemary, then garlic, more oil.
Sometimes, at this stage, his grandmother would call him inside and watch approvingly how he, with his bare hands, rubbed the lamb roast with this mixture of spices, herbs and oil.
Then, they would sing one of the songs that the old woman had learned from her own grandmother. Time was held close to the chest on the island, and always passed along with care.
The meat would go into the oven with vegetables, fresh from the garden - with a lemon with ten cloves stuck into its skin, two glasses of red wine and a bit more olive oil.
The smells that filled the kitchen when the oven door was opened a few hours later was the smell on the wind that now touched the hills.
The boy who was supposed to tend his uncle’s goats woke up and tasted the wind on his lips. It touched his hair like his grandmother’s hand used to do, before he went to sleep each night, when he’d been much smaller.
He was ten years’ old now - which was old enough to be astonished and mildly afraid, when confronted with the unknown.
Then came the sound of a flute, hesitant at first, like the early spring, but then fuller, more assured. Sound became melody, almost a soft singing. The boy stretched, then stood up slowly: sleep still held his legs. His head was still filled with scraps of dreams.
He looked around, automatically counting the goats. All was as it ever was - except for the wind, except for the music.
He crossed himself, muttered an old incantation that he’d learnt on his grandmother’s knee. Words from way before the Christos, way before the churches came and littered the island: small, stone churches that remained pleasantly cool during the summer, full of shadows and filled with the smoke of candles and incense.
Yet the land, the stones, and even some of the olive trees were much older than these small churches. There were even older things, and far different creatures on the island, neither understood nor acknowledged by the priests and their Bibles, their new rituals and incantations.
The Virgin was not always the mother of the Christos. She had different, older names - and she had not always been a virgin or a mother; not always a welcome, and a mercy. The boy had learnt all the old stories and the old incantations from his grandmother.
Once more, he looked around him - still somewhat suspicious. Above him the sun, as of yet not burning with the full force of summer, around him the goats and the old olive trees - but now, as well, a low mist that seemed to rise up from the many big and small, scattered old stones.
The smells and the music now drifted on the mist that surrounded the boy and his goats. Then, in front of him but still some distance away he saw the stars. A cloud of stars which danced like moths along the treetops on red-rimmed summer evenings, vibrating like the air itself and waiting for the hunger of birds and bats.
How many stars made this dancing cloud: twenty, fifty, a hundred? It was impossible to say - impossible also to judge how high, or how far away from him this dance took place.
Without understanding but no longer afraid the boy looked at the cloud of stars. The mist reached now almost chest-high. The goats had disappeared. The branches of the olive trees were now the arms and fingers of strange creatures that reached for him but couldn’t touch him.
The boy started walking towards the dancing stars. The meadow, no, a road now slowly led upwards. The boy didn’t even notice that his feet no longer touched the moss, the stones and the sparse grass. He smelled the wind. He breathed in the music and he watched the stars dance, still some unknown distance away from him.
The mist reached even higher now, higher than the olive trees and the top of the worn-down hills but didn’t reach higher than the boy’s ankles. He walked on and on. The mist now formed the hills: new hills or much, much older ones.
There were trees of mist, villages of mist and sometimes sailing ships of mist that slowly moved in the wind that still smelled of the old kitchen, when the roast was put on the table, with the rice and the bread, the cheese and the olives, and the harsh, red wine.
The wind smelled of the safe enclosure of Sunday evenings at home, when outside the goats softly bleated and the green, stone-strewn hills guarded their small village. The music now seemed to be the only thing that kept the world in balance and it spoke of the calm and coolness of night, the closure and abandoning of day. The stars danced: so wondrous, so still.
The boy now stood on top of a hill of mist. In front of him, right in front of him now, the stars danced. Beneath him was a lake. Beneath him she waited.
She sang the music. She was the wind. She called down the stars that danced in her hair. She was unearthly beautiful. She was naked. Her flesh was the colour of old marble. Her breasts were young and glistened. Her belly was all soft curves, the promise and the beginning of all. Her long hair was black as the night where the stars danced. Her eyes were closed.
The boy stood on the hill of mist and drank her in, and ate her, and danced with her.
She opened her arms, she opened his heart. His flesh and blood disappeared inside her. How long did he stand there? how long did she wait for him to come down to her?
The mist disappeared. The boy opened his eyes. He could still feel her closed eyes upon him. He counted the goats as if in a dream, walked off in a dream, got older in a dream. Time and again he walked the mist, in search of her.
He followed the wind and the music and he got older.
He did not marry. He did not dance at the summer feasts. He did not come to the village anymore. Everything was a dream: the years going by, and the smell of herbs on the wind. Only she was more than dream.
Time moved on and he stood upon the hill of mist. He watched her bathe. He heard her call and welcome him with open arms. And she was always naked. Her eyes were always closed. And the stars always danced in her long, black hair.
He became older. She did not. One last summer, one last climb and what was his age now: sixty, eighty, a hundred years old? Everything was a dream. Everything had gone by so fast. He stood on top of the mist, his back bent low but with the same hunger, the same thirst.
And now, for the first time, she opened her eyes, where the true night was waiting. They told him to come.
He came.
****** ****** ******
That same evening the food cooled off slowly on the kitchen table. The old woman walked to the door repeatedly. She went to the window, and looked out, towards the hills.
Later, hours later, they found the goats that still were grazing peacefully on the hill. The food that the old woman had prepared for her grandson that morning lay untouched under one of the olive trees, next to the chain with its small silver cross, that she had given him many years ago: the dubious protection of a weak, young God.
“Janos, oh Janos.” the old woman whispered.
The hills and the stones were silent. The boy’s uncle led the goats down the hill. The old woman bent down and picked up the chain with the useless, silver cross. She spoke an old curse and then she walked back to the village, back home, where the kitchen was warm and smelled of spices and the where the roast of lamb was on the table, still uncut.
A burning screen of summer sky:
the evening set alight
and touched with disappearing.
The island clouds, blue-veined
with purple hues,
as irreplaceable as porcelain -
a breath of marble floating,
so at home
against the rising shadows
of a dying day.
The stubborn threads of fading light
now move the dust that’s grown
on windows that grew tired
of the distances that must remain
between their liquid frame and eye of star.
And now I lie awake,
all swollen fever,
swollen hunger:
a summer haunting - dressed in lust
and love and loss and longing.
As in their stables horses dream
of plains now draped in lightning;
thunder riding on their breath;
the winter smell of hay now turned
to bone, to dust and
corpse grey memories
of green and hungry life
and armies riding,
waving banners,
golden shields and copper spears.
As I, like sleep,
like dream, like horses
moving through the night,
now worry clay-encumbered feet
and scrape the iron sparkles from the bone -
and yes, the hungry sky and dying,
rising shadows hold the answer:
like nothing I have been
or touched before,
I now must turn to you.