Daniela Theinová 

Translator

Thistledown, fuchsia, flagstone floor:
this noun house has the wherewithal
to sit out centuries

squat between bog-water darkness
and rooms turned inside out to summer,

straw-coloured months of childhood
answering each other

like opposite windows
in thick-set walls

that sunlight will cajole.

Tea roses bluster the half-door.
Rain from eaves footfalls the gravel.

A robin, cocksure of himself,
frittered away all morning in the shrub.

If I knew how to fix in even one language
the noise of his wings in flight

I wouldn’t need another single word.

I babysit by Skype,
breakfast to their lunch,
lunch to their dinner.

I straighten uniforms, ask French,
nag music practice, argue Friends,
trim their Bebo access.

I touch their silky faces on my screen.
I am three thousand miles ago,
five hours in the red.

What would it take –
one crossed cyber wire,
a virtual hair’s breadth awry –

for these synapsed hours
to bloat to centuries,
for my background

to be rescinded
to a Botticelli blue,
my webcam image

ruffed and pearled,
speaking vintage words
into spindrift?

Or, failing that,
for me to be headlonged
into light years off

to the room of an obsolete laptop
where I Skype and Skype
and no one answers,

where I Google Earth to see
if the world namechecks
for me this morning

my son’s bike in the garden,
my daughter’s skirt
on the line?

The wind orchestrates
its theme of loneliness
and the rain
has too much glitter in it, yes.

They are like words, the wrong ones,
insisting I listen to sense.
But I too am obstinate.

I have white walls,
white curtained windows.
What need have I
of the night’s jet-black,
outlandish ornament?

What I am after
is silence
in proportion
to desire

the way music plumbs
its surfaces
or straight words do
the air between them.

I begin to learn
the simple thing

burning through
to an impulse at once lovely
and given to love
that will not be refused.