Jennifer Hayashida 

Translator

The will is horizontal.

The plants’ fat casings shine for a long time.

It is Sunday.

(Between 08.00 and approximately 14.00 I throw up about ten times.

In between I try to lie completely still on the bed or on

the floor in front of the TV.) Much in the poem—in the heavy dark firewood—

changes during the passage of work (aging).

I always collate everything I write.

Things and people are just slowly traded in.

I fuck up.

The flowers bend in the mild western wind.

The fruits shall ripen and fall very ripe to the ground.
 
 
 
 
  
Station—Fjällgatan.
A newspaper lies still and just flaps in the wind.
I suddenly localize all pain to my left calf;
soon bend down to feel there on the back of the leg.
Now I hear that the streetcar actually is coming. It is illuminated and
almost completely empty.

People eat sand.
I ask you if I can change.
Your left hand is a peculiar zoning.
 
 
 
 
 
It is snowing abundantly.
I hate my life.
It is an early, very cold winter morning.
I might be nine, maybe ten years old and through the window I see
as my father tries to push the family’s Volvo, which apparently does not want to start in the cold. Suddenly he slips in the snow and falls forward into the car’s open left front door. I see this, and even though it is only a little past six in the morning, I see it as though it were entirely light out there. He swears and I quickly go back to bed again. To close one’s eyes and choose a less painful color.

Tuesday.
Is God an in- or exhalation?
Snow does not fall silently (oblong) everywhere.
 

 
 
 
We remember with our noses.
Tuesday May 16th 1732 Linnæus sees—early in the morning—a
very unusual elm tree. He turns around in amazement, notes
in passing that the spiders’ mathematical webs have become white and
entirely visible from the fog’s dew
The trees stand still and grow standing still.
The newly chopped firewood oxidizes quickly in a reddish hue.

                                                          The date belongs to the photograph
                                                                                          Roland Barthes
 

 
Dates, seasons;
a pair of slow residential streets
with peonies and parking lots.
You are very quiet.
Wheat can never become rye.
The medicine lies so still there on the kitchen table.
Your breathing results in a new (and different) breathing.
 
 

 
 
It is winter in the air and in the lungs.
When Linnæus closes his eyes, the world sleeps.
In a recurring sequence—which is more like a thought than a
dream—I live parallel, completely adjacent to myself. At night I  
stand still in the darkness in the courtyard for a long while and look into my own  darkened apartment. Nothing moves. The room appears  
unusually square, a desk, an unmade bed, a low
bookshelf full of periodicals. During that entire fall (the fall and
winter 1995) I often fell asleep on the parquet floor. Rye can never
become barley. Barley can never become oat.

Diagonals.
 
The scent of chlorine.
 
I must have slept since I wake up.
 
The head and the neck are yet another experience.
 
 
 
 
 
February.
The birds weigh almost nothing.
In a park, right near Vasaplatsen, there is a
tree—one can see it from the streetcar—whose heavy branches appear
to strive downward, towards the ground.
I must always be the one who is consoled.

What remains
inside doubt nowhere to be
outside doubt nothing

It has happened before
like darkness the eyes close
across their face     quantity
overshadowed

It cannot be avenged
it cannot be understood that they are human
or their relatives

Dust across the face
the white that does not contain itself
in the morning the morning’s cold damp grip
at first I do not notice
then it continues

It is their our responsibility     protection/gravel/guilt:
that someone “is a child”     “truly abandoned”
differences are the consequences     that it initially is their responsibility
the faces of the dead/the indivisible/careless

I can no longer see the trees for everyone/soot/black/in the way drifts
inevitable in front like fires     burn/burn within
a red radio in the room     the room was a mistake
now we do not know how to get out
red is blown to pieces     large fires/stories/broadcasts in the gaps
cinematic classical music
someone who shouts it
what will be replaced/to replace the world
that the world can be replaced
and it passes through our walls/nights
white and full like the roses’ buds of hate
o limitation     all life all doors

The lost who suddenly step between those we lost what they lost
their sums     the sum of nights and trees all of it (important and
at the same time so common)     it is as inescapable as distance e.g. a postcard
a normal condition    if we do not notice it/this that we still at all
if we for example regard those who we see have a weakness
and see what we think is obvious
at night it is not so obvious and there are many different nights

But what is to be replaced – the heart the memory – leads us further inwards
towards protection/guilt/gravel     what we cannot stomach or if we
only are cold     afraid     with black broken senses
burned like threes     burned like soot     humans who die
do not listen if one does not listen to them we are not listening
there is protection/guilt/gravel those people who die like crime
once     a single crime     no one can defend it
there is no punishment sufficient punishment     no defense
for the individual is perhaps a crime and therefore she must be tried
in this sense we do not belong to ourselves

What prevents us     is a stop in the darkness a rest
these blood ties frightening bean stalks strong growing borders
so we often hurry on     despite
stuffed animals/slaughter animals/nightly logic     a night full of flares flames holes
no enduring meaning     when we feel something/long/longing
the scope is endless

More and more     in other ways we know
we are damaged by forgetting     pain that left us unscathed
finally     the notion of similarity     far out there
pain or loneliness     why do they torment each other     like children

Long curfews     breaks     smoke breaks too     long registries     sentences
irregularities in courtrooms  nonsense     vending machines     machines     relatives
who do not know what they are doing     murmured conversations and sudden eruptions     someone had to go to the hospital     every night     new undecided incomplete strikes     terrible people     terrible thoughts     hatred     self-hatred     towards people
but not towards animals or children     confusion around characters and character assassination  if someone really is a bastard and still wounded

Is it unsustainable     the sweet animals     the sweet meat       sleeps from the beginning always – it is always in every moment – do their bodies evoke their own childhood
our own     it depends     mother/much/less intensive
overall internal like blood     evokes like stone

To see someone’s face through water     only with the face beneath water
we do not know where it comes from     where we have left it
who has left us without it     which
what is to be replaced     I replace     what came first
what hurts

A child bears a frightening resemblance to its mother
and their intuitive way of touching each other
spreads through time and space
like trees through branches
light through the eyes
their bars around them
like blood

A white skating rink
an ocean to protect
a chilly gray day in January
a memory that covers another memory
one of all the feelings is tension
extension of hair
periods of calm
a constant selfish love

Snow-clad     settled light snowfall     covering
the unfailing light     the exact
word for the small wounds
one of several ways to administer pain
a horde that replaces us
an ocean not to break

Holes filled with water and flesh and blood
our own     all     this oxygen
replaceability     the irreplaceable
until the end
that will be obscured
and lighter and lighter snow close close
closes like the darkness like stars
whiten in the dead snow

Dead flies     white billowing fabric
living flies     white billowing fabric
a thoroughly overcast sky
covered with mute bodies mute
water without beaches     fires without trees
the yielding     weight     darkness earlier and earlier
falling     rising     frequent

Your way of describing a sunset like blood
all the ways of describing a sunset like light
the roving words and after them

Black branches without leaves hang in the trees
like white driven gray     driven clouds
neutral ground neutral rocks

It is inevitable that bodies grow
were tall     irrevocable     vulnerable
limited     sufficient     restrained     like animals

The field shelters fear
whatever is said    whatever is written
uniform like children – apparently unintentional –
their running and this: where are they now raging/in hordes

The word war is just distance now
screens and different ways to continue     but also images remain ruins
men in despair – fathers – who cannot make their way anywhere
the indefensible
I think about to whom it belongs

White swarms crushed hands or lamps
absent mothers     dead     roses     speechless many
in bloom  in common     red     bodies instruct us
have and hay     access and lack     touch and terror
bright flight     flighty light     need for protection     averse to light

Here is a kind of dream in reality
an evasion or asset
sunset its completely golden
beginning e.g. through the fog     glows a golden light
dreamlike and truthful     we are even further away

Their faces are nowadays just an exaggeration
a kind of time that does not resist itself or the eternal
I make up the field of vision and the limit
the word I recurs many times
but time passes even faster     rush, birches, wrenches
you walk away nearby

The sky gives the impression of no longer being over but under
same field today as yesterday     white that does not restrict itself
devastating birds and views
it is easier to sleep this early in the year
it is no longer possible to understand our rules
their obligation

The field exists like violence     inside     different ways that have to do with money
and language     citizenship violence     snow     a cold dust that reminds
absence paper drifts light     there are humans in piles
dreaming snow     indiscriminately     the dead are already dead
hence covered – muted – waiting

There is peace
At first I do not notice
Then it continues

It is a field
Unforgettable heart
The sun, shining

It is its duty
During great suffering
Alone of a lone mother

It is a misunderstanding
Where would be the most grave
In her head

It has happened before
Living dead or dead living or
Someone with their hands

Silver will rain down on the field
I will see with my eyes

Wait until something
Everything happens since

There are no trees
It does not clear

I do not want to know who and why
She laughed like a completely joyful child

Worry and the worry it sparks
The faltering shadow falters

Something tears a heart
My heart

Wanting love tears something apart

You stand outside the door with the door
What is forgotten remains in forgetting

Humans are related to each other
Each other’s calm     independence     absence of hope

Maybe we will always be torn between despair
Maybe the same death will be repeated

protect to prevent survive
protect to protect : prevent survive punish
protect: secure / connect
physical & verbal damages
the pain / the plaintiff / the dear

prevent to prevent / protect / dear
my / the dear / close / second closest / next of kin
offspring as healing / protection

punish / heal –
heal to help / overshadow
shadow to heal protect help shy away
to prevent / limit / keep
heal : improve to keep to ease
binding shadow / binding stone
bind the tight throats like children

My family arrived here in a Marxist tradition

My mother immediately filled the house with Santa knick-knacks
Weighed the pros and cons of the plastic Christmas tree
as if the problem were hers

During the day she distinguished between long and short vowels
as if the sounds that came out of her mouth
could wash the olive oil from her skin

My mother let bleach run through her syntax
On the other side of punctuation her syllables became whiter
than a winter in Norrland

My mother built us a future consisting of quantity of life
In the suburban basement she lined up canned goods
as if preparing for a war

In the evenings she searched for recipes and peeled potatoes
As if it were her history inscribed
in the Jansson’s temptation casserole

To think that I sucked at those breasts
To think that she put her barbarism in my mouth

I only grow older
Your head is excessively pale and still.
If Europe’s history is true, I want to learn it as one learns
a song. Today when I was going out to buy chips and
chicken the stairwell smelled slippery of soft soap. At Hotel Lautréamont
the statements all the time move upwards through the stanzas. You mop
your forehead with a rose, recommending its thorns.