………………………………………………in imitation of somebody
.
The tree’s wintry empire—that’s what
……………………………………..bewildered me on that morning.
Raised up on my elbow, gazing out the window,
……………………………….drunk from the previous evening,
I spoke, scraping my stubble with my fingernail,
addressing neither the fat angels
……………………………………hanging unconscionably low,
nor myself, nor the receding shades
(many, with nobody left to recognize them,
had become totally pure like the eyelids
……………………………….of an alphabet looking backward)—
“No matter what the mouth may pronounce,” the voice neared,
“No matter what the half-sleeping hand may extract
…………………………………from the disappearance of borders,
nothing will ever compare to its time
which grows into all universes, where
the tree flows on with its branches, like the book of sand,
endlessly running into itself,
…………………..incinerating one hundred times under the Arctic sun,
in the black rustling of reading, in the bottomless honey
…………………………of repeating the same thing over and over, the thing
that defies reason, renunciation, and that
…….which we’ll touch upon later.”
Afterward, having taken two steps toward the window
(the coffee burned on the stove):
“Meaninglessness!” it was pronounced. “It impels one
………………….to forget about the secret tryst between eyelashes
and the poppy seed dust flowing down along the night’s shore,
………………….and about the ribwort, the hot wells.
Mornings, the fascination of meaninglessness reeks of awakening,
at night, it is as sleepless as allegory,
it sits at the foot of the bed stitching, out of whatever’s at hand,
………………….what already was, which is to say, what never will be,
teaching, from childhood on, the clay of patience,
………………….and also the warfare of diminishing burn wounds.”
*
In the morning, leaving the same gnarled tree
on the other side of the doorstep,
the same vague thoughts of wine and some seed
………that rends the garments of discord and vision.
translated by Bela Shayevich
