A meat recipe
All you need is a knife,
all you need is a smooth stone.
You caress stone with blade until the rock gives in.
The knife should be noiseless, supple, shiny,
it should absorb rough tenderness and the nerves of hands.
After that it is quite simple.
A chopping-block, a pinch of salt,
greenery to taste to look good
and a bay-leaf.
After that it is quite ordinary
because only the spices matter
(Oh, think of a bowl and pretty colors!)
Fire is easy thanks to Prometheus.
Only the knife and the stone are essential
And one submissive neck.
A return to not knowing
It is time to return to not knowing.
We the onlookers
are being watched again.
We keep silent.
We have said too much.
Let us listen.
Soon we will all be asked to talk.
Our transparent faces
far from touch
hover on the paths of air.
Numbers vibrate, severed from dimension.
There are still loads with no weight.
What listens to us when we do not know
what dreams of us when we grope
through day
what looks at us, directs us and records
when we believe we are
alone?
It is time to return to not knowing.
Repeated
greetings from fallen snowmen
restive spaces
fire tree stone
a structure of dust
despair and hope.
Hypernakedness
My refuge was in the forest
- you have already cut it down.
I left for other places
- and they have become yours too.
Wherever I ran
you crossed my path.
Forewarned houses lurked at the crossroads.
It should have been a duel
but you had helpers.
Now they all hunt one
creature,
no close season
no choice of weaponry.
There is no-one to give a shelter
no-one to keep a secret
no-one who would
not point me out
no-one who would not track me down.
And you follow my
footprints
before my desperate feet can press them in.
What's left to me is shut in a silent word,
but you have wormed into my
secret self
and I am not my ally any more.
Though my tongue stays speechless
my
guts open their hundred lips.
I am betrayed by glands and my breath denies me,
blood pulse and heart beat
prepare my end.
You have taken so much. Though something still remains.
If you must have that too - take my death.
My last refuge is with her.
A thousand and one nights
We know it will come
We match plastic blocks,
sweet lies, petty thoughts
We know it will come
balloons - trivial words
rise up
boasting of colors
we know --
Scheherazade telling stories
tried to live one more day.
From a journey
In the labyrinth
where at every turn a woman
wields a ball of thread
trying
to tempt
with a fresh color
I bought
a needle, a thimble, some wool to try.
I wind it off.
Will there be enough
to darn a hole on a hero's heel
enough to twist round my finger
enough to . . .
No, not enough.
So here I am amongst you
in the labyrinth
where all threads are too short, except
threads spun by Alpha, except
threads
spun by Beta, except
threads spun by threads
which are now in short supply.
I
wind it off.
Is there enough for just one stitch
to prove I was led this way.
No, not enough.
So here I am
in the labyrinth
where another Ariadne holds out her ball
or something like her ball, or
something instead
Perhaps that instead
can help with this instead
No, not enough.
So here I am amongst you
in the labyrinth
And this wall is not a wall
but a
wall of a wall
And this path is not a path
but a path of a path
And this sign
scratched on brick
is a sign to nowhere
just a sign of a sign
how it stinks here
of sweaty waiting and real sweat
how shuffling feet
echo and re-echo in this place
now let us hold hands
let us hold on tight
let us stretch out and look
round
the same old corner
round
another one, a bit further
round
the one that is next
nothing to be afraid of
and besides
there is no other labyrinth within
this
labyrinth
nothing to be afraid of
and besides
all that is in the other place, not here,
all this is in the other place, there.
Spring relief
I'm glad that you can cope without me, Spring,
that you have your moments of
leaves and reeds,
your gray skies and landscapes,
-- everything proceeding just as it should,
without, thank God, any help from
me.
Trees and flies proliferate by themselves,
light and shadow blend in their
own design,
cunning beasts call out to other beasts
and nothing ever asks for my
permission.
It's a relief to me that you, the earth,
can serve a universe and stay on
course
without a thought for trying something new,
although it could be fun to
be amazed!
I am excused from writing of seasons' change,
migrating birds, rivers in
flood, the wind.
What a relief. The world can go on without me,
it can go on
without me
child of Eve.
Summer
Is this my noon or my twilight?
I hear them coming for me,
the horseshoes of
hours strike.
I wanted to bend the day
like a branch in someone's garden,
but day bent me
like a branch of his own.
Translated by Susan Bassnett and Piotr Kuhiwczak
A Polish Lesson
To a young man
Between "I know" and " I don't know"
there's a zone of possibilities sown with safe signs
of desperation and perplexity
those safety valves or emergency doors
you force open in case of catastrophe
their curving birdlike back advises you to leave
your i's undotted your t's uncrossed
don't pin the fleeting
butterflies into place
learn to say "I don't know"
learn to say "I can't say" "I don't remember"
learn to say nothing
train your memory to fail
recognize that you have the right to make mistakes
to stay mute
insist that the noise in your ears is due merely
to history's winds or to the changes in pressure
that make mirages out of daily life
* * *
You live by the very edges
by a wavering outline
sudden darkness
freezes
your blood
the world's maw with its black palate
is poised above you
its fang a sickle
shines indifferently
you'll die
you'll die with a poem on your lips
with a poem spoken once again
to no one
We Won't Look Truth in the Eye
Truth has no eyes
no face
no tongue
truth is wingless
it doesn't live
beyond the seven seas hills forests
I think that truth
is more like a nagging growth
that gnaws inside
I think it's
that sticky thing
rolled into a ball somewhere under your skin
it hates comfort
it suddenly swells
and sends out desperate signals
dark ones like a deaf-mute's moving hands
it hurts
it chokes
you can't keep quiet any longer
you scream
Translated by Stanislaw Baranczak and Claire Cavanagh
* * *
such heat
to curl the edges of our speech
consonants
long and sliver-thin
play hide-and-seek
spoken
unspoken
then spoken again
depending on the circumstances
the senses stammer
in the immeasurably spacious folds
of unexpected events
what are we speaking for
or about
when it would be better to mutter to snort
to purr
like a cat
A Single Moment
From its hiding place an unfamiliar bird sings a familiar song
Across the grass a little dog chases a gray squirrel
all the way out of my field of vision
I draw near to the capacious heart
of the maple
which must have begun long ago to summon me here
My ears pick up from the riverbank the rowers' lively shouts
and the cricket's industrious chatter attempting no less
with its dense net of voice than to capture whole the brilliance
of late September
which already is painting everything with its gold- me the river itself
Everything seems like it will last forever
Everything seems like it will always be this way.
Non Finito 1
To Feliks
(the principle you're writing about, non finito,
evolves best in images from dreams)
through the freely flowing waters of a dream trail algae
the embryos of images
clostridia slender as crescent moons
frolic around a dancing euglena
and obliquely directing an organ of light at my pupils
they radiate a darkly reflected brilliance
that fathoms me to my bowels
what are they spinning these eddying micro-spindles
what are they winding
which is me here
I untangle myself from tentacles, cilia, Lady's Slippers
on the dark side of impenetrable nets
lost in the rectangular abyss
of an unimaginable aquarium
along its fragile glass walls creep ferns
actual glossapteridia grown in permocarbon
here alongside them my mute lips, open
and exaggerated in close-up
cloud over with steam and frost and blur
methodically blot themselves and me out of time's fluid
Translated by W. Martin
In Liquid State
the waters of my body house pink sea anemones in globules of dream
the waters of my body when I'm not watching
lure a bulging-eyed triton
like a fugitive from a Paul Klee canvas
in order to comfort him
to comfort-
the waters of my body
house brown and red algae.
When I dream-
Saccorrhiza bulbosa raises my hair
so that it stands on end
when I dream-
Macrocystis pirifera
with its millipede legs and long as a dachsund
sends chills down my spine
and makes my flesh creep
whereas Claudea elegans
is a rose-colored note
or rather a key for unlocking heavenly melodies
(you might compare
Petit Larousse en couleur
page 26)
The waters of my body long for the sea
they roll and roll, inwardly rolling
grains of sand
and now from dust to dust
they throw dust in my eyes
while beneath the deck of a poem
clinging like a shell to the underside of words
rocks creaking
my stunned and already blanched
I.
Translated by Ela Kotkowska-Atkinson
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