1.

Shadows are thickening‚ the long backs of hills plunge 
into the ocean’s waves‚ the drone of a trumpet solo 
is heard. Perhaps it comes from a transistor.—
Somewhere at the edge of the visible world the hidden

power of melancholy is lost in the quicksand of Maghreb.
—Noon throbs metallic. Veterans sleep in wicker rocking 
chairs. Their shoes’ soft leather smells perhaps of resin
and of punitive journeys. —Ripe fruit lies in the burnt 

grass of the garden. The white walls of small houses 
shiver from the heat‚ lethargy corrodes the officer’s liver. 
And turns it into a catalog of plants. —One of them 
recites Dante. Many deaths slowly gather in him.

 

2.

Clock hands have been still for years. Young roe deer 
are frozen in lithographs. —Reports continue. —And 
fermented fruit goes to the head: in weightless dizziness
there is a mirage. Which multiplies with recent encounters 

with the theory of poison. Many times. No surprise: memory 
melts like wax. The magnetic circle of crime is now stronger
than gravity. Nothing unusual. If pigeons flutter in dreams‚
they retreat at once into oblivion. —This instant‚ when the air

trembles with fervor: all places trick the memory on times 
passed‚ variations of murder‚ the symmetry of slow deaths.
All of these. And the human trace is tattooed with a green snake 
head‚ burning with a wish to break through the sound barrier.

 

3.

This poem is for you‚ anonymous. Irritable and ill from 
monotonous waiting for some cry still wandering through 
seasons. And you don’t write a diary. No one has‚ no one 
like you. You’re left to yourself. And to nostalgia for the future. 

In your own way you will endure refugee camps and part from 
beautiful ornaments in secessionist architecture. On titmouse 
feathers you might lay eyes on the brief glimmering of weapons. 
And your solitary whistle. Which lasts. Long. It will harden into elegy. 

You can do nothing about this. So it must happen. Then despair 
murmuring softly in us. That’s the point. You can drink six bottles‚ 
but you will not revive your own face in the mirror of a stranger’s 
memory. You will be single and alone until the end. Surely.

 

4.

Banks‚ flags‚ ships‚ holidays‚ cock fights‚ epaulets‚ 
copper engravings of English horses‚ dead guards
and elite divisions. All this slides by. Disappears 
like talk during an afternoon slumber. —

Face it. Arrival and a desolate scene are the same thing. 
Instead of a planted tree and pages of a will only a name 
remains‚ which someone entered in a dictionary. Nothing 
more. Oh‚ perhaps someone for a moment remembers 

the metamorphosis from pale to purple: like in old times with 
lords. Otherwise it is really nothing. —Rip the crumpled
carnation off the chest‚ lean over the geometric granite
cubes‚ exhale. Now. Like those in the Stammheim prison.

 

5.

At the border of lip and tongue‚ someone is counting days 
to a strong earthquake‚ which Halley’s comet did not predict. 
And bird catchers are emptying full traps and family
homes sink into the mud. As from afar‚ grape leaves 

scorched with Peronospora gently fall off the fronts 
of houses. And the spears of white hunters unerringly
find the softness of loins and bellies: I would like to place
the last period. Listen‚ there is no rhetorical figure

of eternity. Behind a closed window some long vowel foretells 
an influx of sorrow‚ which laps meekly in anguished people.
A thick haze settles on all sides and the room expands.
Under a railway embankment the two of you are lost in a slow fuck.

 

6.

To survive all that persists in evident harmony.
To be snow on a warm palm‚ which will freeze from 
the weight of silvery crystals. To be a letter in Sanskrit.
Buckwheat honey. To be less than eternity and confidential

documents. To become poppies‚ tobacco leaves‚ a flat
landscape. A word which no one can repeat properly. 
To rustle to someone like a rhyme from a sonnet
and instantly sink into disorder. To be absurd bird

chatter echoing in all the rooms like a melody. To be vast 
fields‚ blues in forty-year-olds’ memories. To survive 
the anguish of a space that constricts like an animal’s pupil.
That attacks with dreadful force and settles its belated debt.

 

7.

Under horizons of wet flocks it could have been otherwise.
Perhaps neighbors would leave him in the room for at least 
three days. So that the air might lie heavily on his eyes‚ open 
wide to the hunt and flight. And to nostalgia‚ which no one 

among them can shake off. So that death’s thin song would echo 
in his ear. And the casual droning of bees would close the circle. 
But I don’t believe it. In the people endlessly wandering‚ some 
map is always rioting beyond the edges of these lines. 

And it borders on the unbearable. So that the premonition 
of a cuckoo’s muffled singing clearly breathes in them.
And in their liver burns brute strength‚ which in the presence 
of a woman turns into yearning. With it comes the smell of cinnamon.