Christian Hawkey 

Translator

Too few resources to think of all that occurs

vegetal fate, i.e.: Decomposed in the Clay Pot.

Bored by our styles the intensive disgorges us

into the light, humus for spirit, microbes.

Other than memory, suggests the child, what is not

actually in space, undisgorged in time

on this day it learns the words nougat

Honduras, lymph nodes, Little Longnose.

It learns the word babel and doesn't forget it

only its sense, it learns the word ball-peen,

the word ballpoint, the word balloonist.

Signifikant: i.e. the fate of the hamster,

of spiders. Here the child utters only -kant:

lays out articulate graves, speaks with the dead.

O elephantine Pan in the china shop of the muses
behind the veils you look for song, you practice
thinking: “We are
                   a conversation,” you say, “We are
                                                                       elephants”

and you are utterly alone with these sentences
lonelier than dialogues, the thickest skin
lonelier than the world’s electric appliances

energy-saving light bulbs, geothermal heat pumps
neglected and hungry for love they approach
hesitantly out of the unending darkness

against the hidden latticework of your cubicle
against your knowledgeable hands and knees
your sleeping feet, your imaginary wings
they rub their chrome, synthetic coats …

The objects, semi-skilled in helplessness
impossibility of touch

the song, under its sleeping cap of stars
it moves the lonely boiler, the roaming
                                                                        fan
also
your roaming eye

in a communal nest without electricity
without thought
only gravity-bound bodies, their almost colony-building panic
before the coming winter.

I

Imperceptibly cultivating a style, wind from the Northwest
and the garage door compose a flowing rectangle

the emotional project, strung out
it hangs before us, in the air, breathing laboriously

we seek to bind love’s structures
in conversation, in the long forest-walks
through fog.

II

The heart foams heavily in its gazebo of pain
wild vines, screams, dry roses, silence

darkness spreads geometrically in quiet rows
in the island’s hem of water lilies, floating pond scum
and forests are and
premises, within which you vanish

the area, naturally artificial, correctly incubated
the loneliness of your mud boots, pragmatic
under your white knees

and in the evening can we not hear, behind the drunken roar
of lost witnesses, your swans in the biosphere, singing.

III

Always in shades of tiredness
snowed in, in mountains, in plains, in one’s own body
to encounter—a
                            distant shore, overgrown with light,
floating in self-invented fog . . .

Odd correspondence with narcissi, saxifrage
this special technique was called “living”, “home“

instead we wanted to go deeper into the distilleries of tenderness
to never end this undistracted Yes

words, their sorrow, penguin tracks on the pack ice
—to look at you walking, breathing, to contemplate
your childish fists in sleep . . .

IV

Speaking exhausts the community of pain
future settles on thought like a mold, like fire

in the rotunda, a red horse standing there, made from copper
the blood in your fingers, the party lights
ring the trees like a wilted piano.

To walk around, restless, striking a few keys
sometimes the music lures something out

the instant in the play of twigs
a longing, carved out of cheap stone lovers announce the night

cold fusion, centaur

whoever steps within range of trees is alone.

there (Goethe)

Beloved do you know hatred, trees
the Spanish wall
do you know the islands, the crusaders
in their one-man torpedoes —

Beloved, forgive me, to Golgotha I planned to travel   
however in the dresser drawer
lay only a gold revolver (so I stayed).

Do you know the sea, traces of fearlessness
in the foam, Beloved, in the foam
do you know the country, its dislocated hydraulic arm
heavily it lies around, beneath the hungry air
aimless wind
traces of wool , warmth, dust.

Gladly I would set out
Beloved, would live with you under lemon trees:
yet in my tragic veins
the elements of Gibraltar
and of all lost capes move sluggishly around
manic, lidless eyes –    

my heart is a countess, surrounded by attendants
at the city’s periphery, Beloved,
                         the rented pianos bellow!

          Will he who collides with things
          be the same as he who harmonizes them?
          This is probably it, which saddens me.
          Hugo Ball

I

Outside it’s still, no tank from Shell
in the frequency of my eavesdropping
no atom breaks off   
falls into the canal, no depressed organ
rehearses betrayal and the lily
           before me in the dreaming glass –

this flora of my longing also
sneezes its fragrance semiotically   
without a noise into the terrifying night!

Outside it’s still, the empty parking lot
thrust-reversal of happiness and a tiny
                                            academy
far away Asia threatens
a horn of Poseidon, with freight trains …

And now the world outlasts winter!
The onions lie on the table
the apparatuses of wonder circle –

but the snow is no longer gothic
a perfect ore-form, a light blue
                                            clocked violinist
no, it is grey
and watery, the excavation layers of spring
alas –

and only the lowest snow-angels
remain at the gas stations
hooded and marxist
in their windproof parkas.

II

Outside it’s still, mountain and valley are sleeping
motionless city, the misery of demolitions

their slow fire simplifies the space
the heart-afflictions of the trainers
                           balcony plants

and in the ocean the whale
and in the freezer the eel
delicacies, at the edge of my weakness
lies also love, a ghetto of roses –

the large concrete bodies angle the light
where my hand lies
                 a yoke for moths
and the poems scurry over the snow
in little steps …

The dead surrealists
grumble apocryphally in the matrix of woods
chewing the star-clover into this night
dry sea trunks, snow climate –

behind the misery of trees
the homeland glows
the elements invent themselves, my Beloveds   
lie in conflict and dissolve

the moon from its seat rises up
there its yellow mouth
there its legs, dragging.

I dwell in Possibility...
                                Emily Dickinson

observe these families of behavior at living. now we have the day of six billion.
 historical battles reenact us and we, them.

overwhelmed by histamines many therefore are born naturally.......... a carnival
rehearsed for years, but never staged for years.

..........................superior forms of shame, of sterilization, when you're a kitten.
the production of the face as hair removal and world fair.

crystal palace exhibits the very fire of nations and of natality................. here is
the address of a shrub, a small leaf, a clump of cells.

i entered the national pavilion and exited as an extended family. I transplanted  
in 1967 the first human heart—into twins.

convenient walkways link the sands, convenient run times light them up
flamingly, the biennale. monochrome colored-in microphages.

.........................which phase of work is that and what of it remains. the rejection
of the organs. the rejection of—the hand, the artist.

geodesic domes, surrounded by undergrass, landed... waterfalls and nurturing
wells in soilless hydroponics. i no longer see

the eyes that once saw the kaiser....... kindergarten, shredded tissue, pieces of
the socius hanging down, cultivated within days like grass stems. and

countless, still rolled up dimensions of parliament sucked in matter… while
to themselves they cried quietly. unroll the blossoming meadow.

their roots rinsed in a sheet of rocky mountain spring water: the friendship
networks. persian carpet and trailer park, replaced over night by replicas. the

primary method of reproduction stretches overall until the horizon....... a gau.
that was the history of aids from 1900-1950.

the re-recognition of unknown animal species and their riders in khaki... deliver it
like a multiple. magic rituals as love spells.

..............................this sole encounter with my best friend. waiting for an object is
a part of it. so much

for labor that remains permanently unskilled. flattened by an asphalt roller the
shar pei grumpily pulls itself back together.

as long as the unwritten life lasts in its written laws. the dermal ridges needed
only an unspecified moment to unfold.

wipe off the fingerprint from the finger.............. you would drink with your mouth
at the predetermined breakaway point.

........................in which the nearby treetops are reflected. yet to stand a little in the
unclothed need for power. and then the identical,

the walk of the shar pei, falling alone into different times................... violet palms,
bent by this cyclone. you diagram your concept of bliss for me.

the organization's measurable depth, which animates us. checking the
prototype meter. the houses made of cake.

montagne sainte-victoire´s twenty four expiring versions per time
unit. notice the fresh expiration dates on everything around you.

nature produces pre-prepared food. therefore through public offices
the harvested passes, the body weight passes, clothed.

we lay on top of each other, in the overlap of generations. above me a
president and the endless array of his most vivid performers.

says one pea to the other. the supply lines are covered over and over
with residential areas. layers of city offices.

if structures take to the street then what exactly is the street. and the
fruit on the vine, optimally preserved for one second.

i paid cash in the grocery store and out of the atm the money came
back, the money which grows on trees.

living on the factory grounds. the source returning to itself. the heart pays the
liver.

says the infant. i will die very soon.................. gather into the soil the clowns
that instantly pop back up.

this individual shall stand for a herd, which, as it moved on, began to graze
on other bodies. the shareholders within a pyramid system, working.

how many meals can you take in tonight......... without being crushed by your
own progress. among the victims: the highly-gifted ones.

landscapes out of expectation.............. visible as a front yard. in it we discern
the burning forest and under it, ground water.

their brilliance is their didacticism... the full particulars regulated by a federal
law. how many times can you go to sleep tonight. a thousand years.

I pray, I pray, alone
among green foliage I munch on chips, salty manna    
–
City, vacant mountain, the moon aims
with the composure of a bricklayer
over the ditches …

The stars are dull, a braille script
in yellow house-light, down at the gate opressors stand
a bunch of zeros, snow-eyed
demons, losers with whistles—       

but the world continues to breathe
at my window, no curse
drives it out of its secret
no worm gnaws on it, no roar of a sacred
cow
can melt it!

Wide field, under snow fences
it sinks back, into a granite sleep,
the ocean also sinks, also the large
sea-mammals sink, and all angels
are sinking back
into their hinged creation—

in a snow globe, before me  
everything collapses, the stars shake themselves off
but nothing moderates the weight
of things, casts out the demons
these boneheads —

down at the gate they stand continuously
merry snow-herders
leaning on their shovels, playing a shell game
and their hats, there in the depth
fluctuate like discs ...

Empty balconies glowed, islands suspended at the outskirts
the air, presumably sleeping, lazed around, a ferry

I leaned my head into her torso
found, in the river’s regime, a current
under bridges, and in tunnels
the instruments
     chains of light, swirling off.

Near the harbor
I was alone with the water, which touches the land there
cranes splint the continent
at its edges, along the horizon, the sea
occurs.

Heart’s domain, neon and slow exchange of these wares
-- somehow meditate, somehow stay awake --

as the scene mesmerized us, with its highs and lows
the evening is full of speech, but the words limp

the bodies of plants regenerate themselves, wooden and
still, trojan horses, we lie at the bottom of the city

so awake, in its sleep, our patient flesh
communicates with rivers. Wandering currents, near shore

hesitant skin, the tiny emotion makes you content
dream figures fall out of my years like foliage

excessive tree pollen. Let us now journey long
to water, to land and to air, let us now forever

never abandon this hotel. Never with the stars, never
cease, in the music. Your pulse, your hair is flying.