Brian Henry 

Translator

The word end
At all ends
And places
So you
Become more and more
An archive.
The word end,
The word unready,
An incision that requires
Trust.
Without a trace,
Like drowning
In a vanishing sentence
During
Silent lovemaking.
The end of a poem.
Not a place,
Indefinability,
A body,
Not mine
Not yours,
The body of a remnant.
It pierces us
Like a needle,
Like the word needle.
It sewed nothing,
Unstitched nothing.
The word pricks,
The body moans,
Extends a tongue,
Though nothing
Happens,
Everything
Has once again
Concluded.
From an end
Two hands
Grow.
A body,
Everywhere
Open
On all sides
Of a place
That only
Can be
Ignored,
A name
That is missing,
And has abolished
Every beginning.

Who speaks when you are not speaking in your own name?
When you do not pretend to speak in the name of another,
But there is the presence of a voice like the ghost’s at a séance?
Just retro larifari, cadabra abra, aha, aha, blah blah?

It happens, as if the wind would speak through you.
As if the bora speaks, the Košava, the Passat, icy Siberian winds.
It happens, invisible while speaking in a clear voice.
And they do not happen. Their returns bring no changes.

Or indeed, somewhere between, where the living brush against the dead.
Drops, with which you have sprinkle their brow, evaporate from your palms.
Again you press the silver button on the plastic box.
Again they come roaring, this time to warm your frigid fingers.

Just abracadabra, aha, aha, blah blah. Because they bring nothing new.
The gas station toilet is just like before.
And you, too, were not changed. Only through your palms did something blow.
You do not hold him, but sometimes he holds you. He has your life lines. Your handshake.

He has no name, he who speaks when you do not speak in your name.
And no home. And no things of his own.
A no-name without a body, always on the road.
And his paths can also be yours, but yours can never be his.

Mintafiction, minthane, mintabolism.
There the smell of mint grows out of bone,
Out of a neighbor’s thumb and a stranger’s shin.
No animal could do it, it’s not worth repeating.

Mintatax, mintasound, mintaphysics.
For what stays, when only plants try
To heal a musician’s rib and the mayor’s skull.
No laxative could do it, it’s not worth mentioning.

Even less who will remember, cannot forget
Endless fields of mint, ruts, indifference.
Mintamen. Mintanight. Mintanaught.
No dictionary could do it, it’s not worth noting.

When you kill it at the edge of the pan, you don’t notice
That the egg grows an eye in death.

It is so small, it doesn’t satisfy
Even the most modest morning appetite.

But it already watches, already stares at your world.
What are its horizons, whose glassy-eyed perspectives?

Does it see time, which moves carelessly through space?
Eyeballs, eyeballs, cracked shells, chaos or order?

Big questions for such a little eye at such an early hour.
And you—do you really want an answer?

When you sit down, eye to eye, behind a table,
You blind it soon enough with a crust of bread.