Poetry

To Spain, and not a single day of awe there. The Spanish swans lifting from the river: no ripples. To sit in a spring whose waters offer no prophecy. The not-expected. No one reading your mind. No stopping the light inside the beast from crumbling. Long ago, a fog came to settle on a low…

translated by Jonathan Galassi Ravager of lethargies and sorrows, night; safeguard against silences, the age of offhand sadnesses re-buds. And I see boys in me still slender-hipped, on the shells’ slope turn anxious at my changed voice.

Summation: It was deliberate. We had to burn our barn, let our harvest go. Precipitations: Mama lost the baby, Father did not come back from town. The chestnuts failed again. We were distressed. Particularly lost. At winter’s eager edge. The Process: We bemused ourselves. Considerations: We could not: leave Mama alone with her cavernous dry…

translated by Jonathan Galassi Choked with white and black roots, cut by the waters, the earth smells of ferment and worms. Sorrow of things I don’t know is born in me: one death is not enough if time and again now the sod weighs its grass on my heart.

road sign at the edge of town A blue part that is remembered, not a member of the class of prosthetic memories but still a leg up, a boost giving a glimpse over the wall of exile, to a blue that is remarkable and lovely for a garbage can: an aisle of blue garbage cans…

translated by Jonathan Galassi Infernos howl in the murdered trees. Summer sleeps in the virgin honey, the lizard in its monster infancy. For my human smell, thanks to the angels’ air, to water, my celestial heart in the cell’s fertile dark.

R: A special present for my birthday? How sweet of you. But what are you thinking of? T:                  Rather than some trinket, beaded out of flashy stones, a living gift. R:    A living gift! One that grows on me? T:          Exactly. A present, out of all our past, to keep you constant company. R: Good!…

    1. It’s so much easier to get further from home than nearer that all men become travelers.     2. Of all the ways to avoid living, perfect discipline is the most admired.     3. Idolaters of the great need to believe that what they love cannot fail them, adorers of camp, kitsch, trash that…

May 24 A shake erupts, a self-guffaw. Some miles up, he reads a life, detailed with his own, by drugstore specs on a wasp-boy’s cord. His focus is keen, a screen. Elated as he gets in this fake air, the book’s a scream. Another shake. Across his aisle, two toddlers shriek strange alphabets and wail;…