Pails of rain-water. But

you are not there, not there.

Neither one of the two. Bone is

too much bone. And spirit is too much spirit.

Where is the real you? All of you?

Too much here. Too much there.

And I won’t exchange you for sand

and steam. You took me for kin,

and I won’t give you up for a corpse

and a ghost: a here, and a there.

It’s not you, not you, not you,

however much priests intone

that death and life are one:

God’s too much God, worm – too much worm!

You are one thing, corpse and spirit.

We won’t give you up for the smoke of

censers

or flowers

on graves

If you are anywhere, it’s here in

us: and we honour best all those who

have gone by despising division.

It is all of you    that has gone.

3

Because once when you were young and bold

you did not leave me to rot alive among

bodies without souls or fall dead among walls

I will not let you    die altogether.

Because, fresh and clean, you took me

out by the hand, to freedom and brought spring leaves

in bundles into my house I shall not

let you be grown over with weeds and forgotten.

And because you met the status of my

first grey hairs like a son    with pride

greeting their terror with a child’s joy:

I shall not let you go grey into men’s hearts.

4

The blow    muffled through years of

     forgetting, of not knowing:

That blow reaches me now like the song of a

     woman, or like horses neighing.

Through an inert building, a song of passion and

     the blow comes:

dulled by forgetfulness, by not knowing which is

     a soundless thicket.

It is the sin of memory, which has no eyes or

     lips or flesh or nose,

the silt of all the days and nights

     we have been without each other

the blow is muffled with moss and waterweed:

     so ivy devours the

core of the living thing it is ruining

     – a knife through a feather bed.

Window wadding, our ears are plugged with it

     and with that other wool

outside windows of snow and the weight of spiritless

     years: and the blow is muffled.

1935

Readers of Newspapers

It crawls, the underground snake,

crawls, with its load of people.

And each one    has his

newspaper, his skin

disease; a twitch of chewing;

newspaper caries.

Masticators of gum,

readers of newspapers.

And who are the readers? old men? athletes?

soldiers? No face, no features,

no age. Skeletons – there’s no

face, only the newspaper page.

All Paris    is dressed

this way from forehead to navel.

Give it up, girl, or

you’ll give birth to

a reader of newspapers.

Sway    he lived with his sister.

Swaying he killed his father.

They blow themselves up with pettiness

as if they were swaying with drink.

For such gentlemen    what

is the sunset or the sunrise?

They swallow emptiness,

these readers of newspapers.

For news    read: calumnies.

For news    read: embezzling,

in every column    slander

every paragraph some    disgusting thing. 

With what, at the Last Judgement

will you come before the light?

Grabbers of small moments,

readers of newspapers.

Gone! Lost! Vanished! So,

the old maternal terror.

But mother, the BookishMall.com Press

is more terrible than Schwarz’ powder.

It’s better to go to a graveyard

than into the    prurient

sickbay of scab-scratchers,

these readers of newspapers.

And who is it rots our sons

now in the prime of their life?

Those corrupters of blood

the writers of newspapers.

Look, friends    much

stronger than in these lines, do

I think this, when with

a manuscript in my hand

I stand before the face

there is no    emptier place

than before the absent

face of an editor

of newspapers’ evil filth.

1935

Desk

1

My desk, most loyal friend

     thank you. You’ve been with me on

every road I’ve taken.

     My scar and my protection.

My loaded writing mule.

     Your tough legs have endured

the weight of all my dreams, and

     burdens of piled-up thoughts.

Thank you    for toughening me.

     No worldly joy could pass

your severe looking-glass

     you blocked the first temptation,

and every base desire

     your heavy oak outweighed

lions of hate, elephants

     of spite    you intercepted.

Thank you for growing with me

     as my need grew in size

I’ve been laid out across you

     so many years    alive

while you’ve grown broad and wide

     and overcome me.    Yes,

however my mouth opens

     you stretch out    limitless.

You’ve nailed me to your wood.

     I’m glad.    To be pursued.

And torn up.    At first light.

     To be caught.    And commanded:

Fugitive. Back to your chair!

     I’m glad you’ve guarded me

and bent my life away

     from blessings that don’t last,

as wizards guide sleep walkers!

     My battles burn as signs.

You even use my blood to set out

     all my acts in lines –

in columns, as you are a pillar

     of light. My source of power!

You lead me as the Hebrews once

     were led forward by fire.

Take blessings now from me,

     as one put to the test, on

elbows, forehead, knotted knees,

     your knife edge    to my breast.

2

I celebrate thirty years

     of union    truer than love

I know every notch in your wood.

     You know the lines in my face.

Haven’t you written them there?

     devouring reams of paper

denying me any tomorrow

     teaching me only today.

You’ve thrown my important letters

     and money    in floods together,

repeating: for every single verse

     today has to be the deadline.

You’ve warned me of retribution

     not to be measured in spoonfulls.

And when    my body will be laid out,

     great fool! Let it be on you then.

3

The rest of you can eat me up

     I just record your behaviour!

For you they’ll find dining tables

     to lay you out.    This desk for me!

Because I’ve been happy with little

     there are foods I’ve never tasted.

The rest of you dine slowly.

     You’ve eaten too much and too often.

Places are already chosen

     long before birth for everyone.

The place of adventures is settled,

     and the places of gratification.

Truffles for you not pencils.

     Pickles instead of dactyls

and you express your pleasure

     in belches and not in verses.

At your head funeral candles

     must be thick-legged asparagus:

surely your road from this world

     will cross a dessert table!

Let’s puff Havana tobacco

     on either side of you then;

and let your shrouds be made

     from the finest of Dutch linen.

And so as not to waste such

     fine cloth let them shake you

with left-overs and crumbs

     into the grave that waits for you.

Your souls at the    post mortem

     will be like stuffed capons.

But I shall be there naked

     with only two wings for cover.

1933-5 

Bus

The bus jumped, like a brazen

evil spirit,    a demon

cutting across the traffic

in streets as cramped as footnotes,

it rushed on its way    shaking

like a concert-hall vibrating

with applause.    And we shook in it!

Demons too.    Have you seen

seeds under a tap? We were

like peas in boiling soup,

or Easter toys dancing in

alcohol.    Mortared grain!

Teeth in a chilled mouth.

What has been shaken out    someone

could use for a chandelier:

all the beads    and the bones

of an old woman. A necklace

on that girl’s breast. Bouncing.

The child at his mother’s nipple.

Shaken without reference

like pears    all of us    shaken

in vibrato, like violins.

The violence shook our souls

into laughter, and back into childhood.

Young again. Yes. The joy of that

being thrown into girlhood! Or

perhaps further back, to become

a tomboy with toothy grin.

          It was as if the piper

      had led us, not out of town, but

      right out of the calendar.

Laughter exhausted us all.

I was too weak to stand.

Enfeebled, I kept on my feet only

by holding your belt in my hand.

Askew, head on, the bus was

crazed like a bull, it leapt

as if at a red cloth,

to rush round a sharp bend

and then, quite suddenly

stopped.

           … So, between hills, the creature

           lay obedient and still.

           Lord, what blue surrounded us,

           how everywhere was green!

The hurt of living gone,

like January’s tin.

Green was everywhere,

a strange and tender green.

A moist, uneasy noise of green

flowed through our veins’ gutters.

Green struck my head open,

and freed me from all thinking!

A moist, wood-twig smoke of green

flowed through our veins’ gutters.

Green struck my head open.

It overflowed me completely!

Inside me, warmth and birdsong.

You could drink both of them from

the two halves of my skull –

(Slavs did that with enemies).

Green rose, green shoots, green

fused to a single emerald.

The green smell of the earth had

struck deeply. (No buffalo feels that.)

Malachite. Sapphire. Unneeded.

The eye and ear restored –

Falcons don’t see tillage,

prisoners don’t hear birds.

My eye is ripe with green.

Now I see no misfortune

(or madness – it was true reason!)

to leave a throne and fall

on all fours like a beast

and dig his nose in the grass…

He wasn’t mad, that sovereign

Nebuchadnezzar, munching

stalks of grass – but a Tsar,

a herbivorous, cereal-loving

brother of Jean-Jacques Rousseau…

This green of the earth has given

my legs the power to run

into heaven.

I’ve taken in so much

green juice and energy I am

as powerful as a hero.

The green of the earth has struck

my cheeks. And there it glows.

For an hour, under cherry trees,

God allowed me to think

that my own, my old, face

could be the same colour as these.

Young people may laugh. Perhaps

I’d be better off standing under

some old tower, than mistaking

that cherry-tree colour

for the colour of my

face…

With grey hair like mine? But then,

apple blossom is grey. And God has brought me close

to everyone of his creatures

I am closer    as well as lower…

a sister to all creation

from the buttercup to the mare –

So I blew in my hands, like a trumpet.

I even dared to leap!

As old people rejoice

without shame on a roundabout,

I believed my hair was brown

again, no grey streak in it.

So, with my branch of green

I could drive my friend like a goose,

and watch his sail-cloth suit

turn into true sails –

Surely my soul was prepared

to sail beyond the ocean.

(The earth had been a seabed –

it laughed now with vegetation.)

My companion was only slender

     in the waist.    His heart was thick.

(How his white canvas puckered,

     and came to rest in the green.)

Faith. Aurora.