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tree.
    Your face: the sun.
    Mine: a sunflower.

80
Snapshots from Memory
I
    The golden lies of May:
    that nature favors me,
    the sun is for me alone,
    like a reading light on the plane.
    Whenever I wish, I press
    a button, and browse at will
    through some worthless magazine
    on a flight to you. And soon will land.
II
    Pellets of sunburned skin,
    a love bite from a gnat
    next to my nipple. Eve’s dress
    must have been sewn for me.
    An ant clambers up my arm,
    a dragonfly lands on my back …
    Stocking up summer for winter,
    I know: the supply will not last.
III
    A lonesome crow
    croaks in the dusk.
    The wind and nettles play cards;
    the deck is marked.
    A drinking binge next door.
    An old man in the drizzling rain
    carries a coat to the dump:
    a woman’s coat, warm, heavy cloth, hardly worn.
IV
    A box for useless scrap.
    A compost dump.
    A puddle covered with grates
    filched from the graveyard.
    A bunch of frisky guys
    on the way to a dance.
    A scarecrow crucified
    for crows to laugh at.
V
    Torment: the homeland.
    Happiness: a foreign land.
    Patriotism: a congenital trauma.
    The tears of a drunken gent
    calling out to a prostitute:
    “Hey, mama!”
    Her grimace.
    Nostalgia: craving pain.
    … went to the movies with classmates,
    came home, found his mother
    hanging in the hallway.
VI
    Picking a sleepy kid
    off the potty at night:
    the kid’s limbs
    a foal’s,
    a Christ’s,
    long and scrawny
    in the dim light.
    A
Pietà.
VII
    Another poet came into being
    when I saw the life of life,
    the death of death:
    the child I had birthed.
    That was my beginning:
    blood burning the groin,
    the soul soaring, the baby wailing
    in the arms of a nurse.

81
    I think it will be winter when he comes.
    From the unbearable whiteness of the road
    a dot will emerge, so black that eyes will blur,
    and it will be approaching for a long, long time,
    making his absence commensurate with his coming,
    and for a long, long time it will remain a dot.
    A speck of dust? A burning in the eye? And snow,
    there will be nothing else but snow,
    and for a long, long while there will be nothing,
    and he will pull away the snowy curtain,
    he will acquire size and three dimensions,
    he will keep coming closer, closer …
    This is the limit, he cannot get closer. But he keeps approaching,
    now too vast to measure …

82
    He pissed on a firefly,
    but the critter took wing
    and alighted on my pants,
    making me jump and scream,
    afraid of catching fire.
    No, no harm was done.

83
    At the piano: my back to the world.
    At the piano: behind a high wall.
    At the piano: like going down into a mine,
    or on a drinking binge, taking along no one.

84
    Thought’s surface: word.
    Word’s surface: gesture.
    Gesture’s surface: skin.
    Skin’s surface: shiver.

85
    Against the current of blood
    passion struggles to spawn;
    against the current of speech
    the word breaks the oar;
    against the current of thought
    the sails of dreams glide;
    dog-paddling like a child, I swim
    against the current of tears.

86
    My craft is not stringing lyres
    with sunbeams, nor weaving wreaths.
    Patient cutting of facets
    on tears unshed, that is my craft.
    Not for the sake of a gleam in the eye,
    but to leave a trace behind …
    and truly royal will be the reward:
    a chance to cry the heart out.

87
    Cannot look at you when you eat.
    Cannot look at you when you pray,
    when you extricate your leg from your pants,
    when you kiss and take me.
    Cannot look at you when you sleep.
    Cannot look at you when you are not here.
    Cannot wait until you come home again
    and after a prayer sit down to eat.

88
    Wrinkles around the mouth
    put it in parentheses.
    Wrinkles in the corners of the eyes
    put them in quotation marks.
    Wrinkles across the forehead
    crossed out the writing on it.
    Wrinkles across the neck …
    and the bridal veil of gray hair.

89
    Who will winter my immortality
    with me? Who will thaw with me?
    Come what may, I shall never trade
    the earthly love for the subterranean.
    I still