On the eyes: seven veils.
I don’t remember you separately.
Instead of features — a white precipice.
* * *
Without marks. Entirely — like a single
Blank spot. (The soul, covered with wounds,
Is — one continuous wound.) To mark the details
With chalk is the business of tailors.
* * *
The firmament is created as an integral piece.
Is the ocean — an amassment of splashes?!
With no distinguishing features. Probably — entirely —
Special. Love is a bond, not an investigation.
* * *
I don’t know whether you’re black-haired — or fair —
Let the neighbor tell me: he can see.
Can passion really — divide you into separate pieces?
Am I a watchmaker or a surgeon?
* * *
You, like a circle, are complete and unbroken.
An entire whirlwind, a complete stupor.
I don’t remember you separately
From love. It’s the sign of equality.
* * *
(In the piles of dreamy down:
A waterfall, mounds of foam —
With novelty, strange to the ear:
Instead: “I” — the royal: “we”...)
* * *
But on the other hand, in a beggarly and cramped
Life: “life, as it is” —
I don’t see you together
With anyone:
— revenge to memory.
January 1-February 1, 1924
Prague. The Mountain.
POEM OF THE END
(1924)
POEM OF THE END
1
In a sky, rustier than tin-plate,
The finger of a pillar.
He stood at the appointed place,
Like fate.
* * *
“Quarter-to. On time?”
“Death doesn’t wait.”
Exaggeratedly-smooth
The sweeping tip of his hat.
* * *
In each eyelash — a challenge.
Mouth taut.
His bow
Exaggeratedly low.
* * *
“Quarter-to. On the dot?”
The voice lied.
My heart sank: what’s with him?
The brain: a signal!
A sky of bad omens:
Rust and tin-plate.
He waited at the usual place,
The time: six.
* * *
This kiss was without a sound:
The stupor of lips.
This way one kisses a queen’s hand,
As well as the dead...
* * *
A commoner rushing
Jabbed his elbow — into my side.
Exaggeratedly-drearily
The whistle howled.
* * *
It howled the way a dog yelps,
It went on, getting angry.
(The exaggeration of life
In the hour of death.)
* * *
What yesterday was only up to your waist,
Suddenly — reaches the stars.
(Exaggeratedly, that is:
In its entire height.)
* * *
Mentally: darling, darling.
“The hour? Past six,
To the cinema, or?...”
A blast: Home!
* * *
2
A gypsy camp brotherhood —
That’s where it’s led!
Like thunder out of the blue,
Like a saber withdrawn,
With all the horrors
Of words we wait for,
Like a collapsing house —
The word: home.
The shriek of a lost, spoiled
Child: home!
A year-old child:
“Give it to me!” “It’s mine!”
* * *
My brother in debauchery,
My chill and my heat,
Some try to get away from home,
Like a horse tearing its tether —
Upward! — and the rope becomes dust.
“But there’s no house!”
“There is, just ten steps away:
* * *
The house on the mountain.” “Isn’t it higher up?”
“The house at the mountain top.
With a window just under the roof.
“Burning not just from the
* * *
Dawn?” This way life starts once
Again? The simplicity of poems!
A home, that means: leaving the house
At night.
(O, to whom will I tell
My sorrow, my misfortune, 60
My terror, greener than ice?..)
“You’ve been thinking too much.”
In response a pensive: “Yes.”
* * *
3
And — it’s an embankment. I keep to
The water, as though to a solid mass.
The Gardens of Semiramis hanging61 —
Here you are!
* * *
I keep to the water’s edge —
The steel strand with a corpse’s pallor —
Like a singer to a sheet of music —
Like a blind man – to the edge
* * *
Of a wall...62 You won’t give it back?
No? I’ll lean over the edge — will you hear?
I keep to the all-quencher of thirst,63
Like a sleep-walker to the edge
* * *
Of a roof...
But my trembling is not because
Of the river — a naiad gave birth to me!
Keep to the river the way you keep to a hand
When your love is next to you —
* * *
And he’s faithful...
The dead are faithful.
Yes, but not to everyone in a small room...
Death on the left side, on the right side —
You. My right side is like a dead man.
* * *
A sheaf of striking rays of light.
Laughter, like the sound of a cheap tambourine.
“You and I should...”
(A chill.)
“Will we be brave?”
* * *
4
The flow of white-haired
Fog — in a gauze flounce.
Overfilled with exhalations, overfilled with smoke,
But mainly — with words spoken ad infinitem!
What does it smell of? Of extreme haste,
Indulgence and little sins:
With commercial secrets
And dance floor powder.
* * *
Married bachelors
Wearing rings, respectable young men...
Overfilled with scolding, overfilled with ridicule,
But mainly — with what was counted out!
Both with big bills, and small bills,
With telltale feathers in a tiny snout.64
* * *
…With commercial transactions
And dance floor powder.
* * *
(Half-turned: is this —
Our house? “But I’m not the lady of it!”)
One — over a checkbook,
Another — over a gloved hand,
And yet another — over a foot in a lacquered shoe
Works on the sly.
...With commercial marriages
And dance floor powder.
* * *
Like a silver notch
In the window is — a Maltese Star!
Over-caressed, over-loved a lot,
And mainly — over-squeezed!
Over-pinched... What can you do,
yesterday’s leftov
ers: stink!)
...With commercial hanky-panky
And dance floor powder.
* * *
Is the chain too short?
On the other hand, it’s not steel, but platinum!
Trembling with a triple
Chin, sacrificial cows chew on
Veal. Above a sugary little neck
The devil is — like a gas burner.
...With commercial crashes
And Berthold Schwartz’s65 —
Special powder...
He was
Talented — and a defender of the people.
“We need to talk to each other.”
Will we be brave?
* * *
5
I capture the movement of lips.
And know — he won’t say it first.
“You don’t love me?” “No, I do.”
“You don’t love me!” “But I’m torn to pieces,
* * *
Drunk up, tormented.”
(Like an eagle gazing at the terrain):
“Excuse me, is this — a home?
“Home is — in my heart.” Semantics!
* * *
Love is flesh and blood.
Color is — watered by one’s own blood.
Do you think that love is
Chatting across a table for two?
* * *
For just an hour — then each of us goes home?
Like those gentlemen and ladies?
Love, that means...
—A shrine?
Child, replace it with a scar
* * *
On a scar! — “Under the gaze of servants
And revelers?” (I, without a sound:
“Love — means a bow,
A stretched bow: parting”).
* * *
“Love means — a bond.”
We have everything torn asunder: our mouths
and our lives.
(I begged you: don’t hex it!
At that hour, innermost, and so near,
* * *
That hour at the top of the mountain
And passion. A memento — gone like mist:
Love is — all the gifts tossed
Into a bonfire, and always, for naught!)
* * *
The shell’s slit of the mouth
Is pale. Not a smile — an inventory.
“First and foremost just one
Bed.”
“Did you want to say
* * *
A chasm?” A drum roll
Of the forefinger.
“It’s not like moving mountains!”
Love means...
“Mine.”
I understand you. Conclusion?
The drum roll of forefingers
Intensifies. (A scaffold and city square.)
“Let’s go away.” And I: let’s die,
I hoped. That’s simpler!
* * *
Enough of cheapness:
Of Rhymes, rails, rooms, train stations...
“Love, that means: life.”
“No, it was called
* * *
Something else by the ancients…
“So?”
A piece
Of a kerchief in a fist like a fish.
“So are we going? Your route?”
Poison, rails, a piece of lead — your choice!
* * *
Death — and no arrangements!
“Life!” Like a Roman commander,
Gazing like an eagle at the remnants of
His armies.
“Then let’s say good-bye.”
* * *
6
“I didn’t want this.
Not this. (Silently: listen!
To want — that is the business of bodies,
But from this day on for one another
* * *
We are souls...) — And he didn’t speak.
(Yes, at the hour when the train is announced,
You hand the sad honor of departure
To women like a
* * *
Glass of wine...) “Maybe it’s delirium?
You didn’t hear it right? (The courteous liar
Delivering the bloody honor
Of the break-up to his lover
* * *
Like a bouquet...).” Attentively: syllable
After syllable, and so — let’s say good -bye,
You said? (Like a handkerchief
Dropped at the hour of sweet
* * *
Debauchery...) “You are the Caesar
Of this battle. (O, brazen thrust!
To return the sword surrendered
By a foe to that same
* * *
Foe!)” He continues. (A ringing
In the ears...) I bow down twice:
For the first time he’s outstripped
In breaking up. “Do you say this to every woman?”
* * *
Don’t deny it! Revenge
Worthy of Lovelace.66
A gesture, giving you honor,
But to me, pulling the meat
* * *
From my bones. — A chuckle. Through jest —
Death. A gesture. (No desires.
To want is the business — of those,
But from here on we are — shadows
* * *
For each other...) The last nail is
Nailed. A screw, because it’s a lead coffin.
“The final of my last requests.”
“Go ahead.” “Never a word
* * *
About us... to anyone from... well...
Those who come after. “ (From stretchers
This way the wounded enter — spring!)
“I’d ask you to do the same.”
* * *
Give you a ring to remember me by?
“No.” His widely gaping glance
Is absent. (Like a seal
Over your heart, like a seal
* * *
On your hand...67 No scenes!
I’ll swallow it.) More alluringly and quieter:
“How about a book for you?” “Like you give everybody?
No, don’t write them at all.
* * *
Books...”
It means, no need.
It means, no need.
No need to cry.
* * *
In our wandering
Fisherman’s brotherhoods
We dance — but don’t cry.
* * *
We drink, but don’t cry.
With burning blood
We pay — but don’t cry.
We dissolve a pearl
In a glass — and rule68
The world — but don’t cry.
* * *
“So I’ll go away?” — I gaze through
Him. Harlequin, for fidelity,
To his Pierrette — like a bone to a dog
Throwing the most despicable
* * *
Of primacies: the honor of the end,
The gesture of the curtain. The last
Locution. An inch of lead
Into the chest: it would be better, hotter
* * *
And — cleaner...
I dug
My teeth into my lips.
I won’t cry.
* * *
The very firmness —
Into the flesh.
Just not to cry.
* * *
In the wandering brotherhoods
We die, but don’t cry,
We burn, but don’t cry.
* * *
Into ashes and song
They hide the dead man
In wandering brotherhoods.
* * *
“So I’m the first? Mine is the first move?
You mean, like in chess? But after all,
They even ask us to go first
Onto a scaffold...”
“Urgently
* * *
I ask, don’t look!” A look —
(Tears are about to roll down!
How do you chase them back
Into the eyes?!) — “I’m saying, don’t
* * *
Stare!!!”
* * *
Distinctly and loudly
A gaze fixed into the heights:
“Let’s go, darling,
Or I’ll start crying!”
I forgot! Among the living
Money-boxes (merchants — too!)
A blond flashed the back of his head:
Maize, corn, rye!
* * *
Washing away all the commandments
Of the Sinai — the fur of a maenad!
A horsehair cloth Holkonda,69
A treasure house of delights —
* * *
(For everyone!) It’s not for nothing nature
Stockpiles, it’s not that totally greedy!
* * *
From these blond tropics,
Hunters are — where is the path