Translated by Mia Dintinjana
In evening silence.
how come you're at my side suddenly, present in trembling and in
trust?
The soft bindweed of touch as it before a journey
so inevitable, how come?
Like fragrance close
the tempting hollow of the palm, as you
from all things, good and bad,
and their exquisite, brief abundance
slowly take your pick: a handful of black berries
and they shut my mouth
these huckleberries
tree branches pasted with white and deep rose-flushed tinge,
with buzzing bees;
the day's bosom has unfolded widely in the sun,
in the frail breeze, in fragrances of freshly harvested
meadow and the long-stemmed chamomilla on its southern side.
The overgrown, darkening edge of the pond.
Your hand in my hair and on the neck, tenderly,
gently. All of its fragileness (and trembling?).
The nudity of leaves breaking open, thickening
greenness, fingers, laying bare a maidenly shoulder.
Droning and fragrance fill the air,
the chestnut trees have barely blossomed, they stand
heavy in moist greenness; secretly
you're turning me on,
a ray of sunshine, reaching me;
like Susanna, young and chaste, death
is bathing before me
murmuring, singing to herself, her hair twisted in a bun,
she's fastening it up,
with small bone combs, showing her neckline, for my mouth?
With her make-up on?
From behind the house the smell of wood is carried on the wind,
the massive pine logs, tumbled aside the path in cords;
the smell of pine pitch
stronger before nightfall,
in the notepad a telephone number that needs crossing out
- like a colourful, embroidered pillow the day retreats
from beneath the head
A lake, graced in graphite splendour before dusk,
at the close of a hot day;
the varied play of hues and shadows,
only there's less and less light; the twilight thickens
from the forest line on the opposite shore
filling the air with cool, smoky mist;
blackness is probing deeper
and the landscape is closing up
like sex - to yield in, softly open and
embrace us both, absorbed in each other, on towels
thrown upon the grass.
a mere instant
what bewildered joy, when you finally drive up
bringing your stuff in from the old
run-down van, what joy like waterfall
all the engenders this perpetuation
gentle cobwebs of light under the chestnut trees
a discarded scrap of core and the way you inhale smoke, half
closing your eyes,
as ashes fall on your shirt and you quickly shake them off
the conjunction of yellow asters, clouds of dust upon the street
and such celebration because you're near
the swallows alighting downward, looks like rain, there's less
and less sky
and the light still pouring only from the cracks and rifts
in long streams;
to memorise
these fragments that can not be held
like nothing
The clear, dark blue of evening sky, the snow,
little red airplane dots above my head
are but memory now, a faded needlework
from recent journey.
The circle connects and the simplest of gestures
cam emerge anew: saying hello, touching one's lips,
shaking the snowflakes off
together with the clothes
in the misty, amberlike air