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 does not 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.
*
Chocolate
He died in order to be the bar of chocolate in front of you.
He wishes that you too would consume the anguish of his death.
Limitlessly. That fear and deliverance would melt in your mouth.
His sweet entrails, the bitter curves of his concoctions.
He asks you to unwrap him, to reveal yourself in the proper light.
Beyond kindness. Beyond mercy and forgiveness.
The two of you touch wordlessly, in the tongue of mute gifts.
What you break and eat, breaks and feeds on you.
Your saliva, the secret feeling of an empty mouth is his.
Your fingers, which search for him in drawers. But not the reverse.
You must remain hungry so that god can still give.
And what your god once gave, he endlessly takes.
*
Above the Sky Beneath the Earth
Shall I fall into the gray sky,
Into the pale stroke in the gray,
Into the trace that, behind a feeling, reveals
That it does not exist, and thus will return.
Shall I fall, vanish into the in-between
Like a mouse in the night flour, sleepless?
And never awaken except in letters.
Shall I fall and fall and leave
Because I love returning, because I am
Above the sky, beneath the earth, forever.
Contents List
11 Translator’s note
from KASHMIR (1995)
14 About the Realistic and Romantic Schools
15 With Closed Eyes
16 Thirst
17 Lullaby
18 Walnut
19 Kashmir
20 A Thousand Doors
21 For You
from PROTUBERANCES (2002)
24 36 Seconds
25 Zero Gravity
26 Citrus
28 Protuberances
29 Anticyclone
30 Sandwerder
31 Ptuj–Pragersko–Ljubljana
32 Still life
33 Plié
34 Between Bread and Salt
35 Returning home
36 Europe
from THE BOOK OF THINGS (2005)
38 A
39 Egg
40 Knots
41 Stone
42 Grater
43 Urinal
44 Chocolate
45 Raisins
46 Ant
47 Umbrella
49 Bread
50 Hand Dryer
51 Stomach
52 Pupa
53 Knives
54 Jelly
55 Bandage
56 Mint
57 Shoes
58 Sea Horse
59 Saliva
60 Toothpick
61 Cork
62 Windscreen Wipers
63 Hayrack
65 Wheelbarrow
66 Earring
67 Salmon
69 Shit
70 Paper Clip
71 Aspirin
72 Parcel
73 Chair
74 Candle
from THE BOOK OF BODIES (2010)
77 The children in our village
79 For two days I’ve been cleaning
80 Your private apocalypse
82 For whom do the angels play?
84 I wake up without my right hand
86 Many weeks nothing
89 She was a little girl with pompoms
91 We go 17 miles on foot
93 Here is just one of the entrances
95 The smell of rotting logs
97 She spends her afternoons sitting
99 With a cheek pressed
100 Above the red button it says
103 Still, when I turn the corner
105 After only half an hour
107 Who mediates for you?
108 A German Shepherd beside a girl
110 The ancient Roman walls
112 The closer the deadline
114 Of all the healers
116 I’ve scattered my body
118 The word BARE
120 The word BUT
122 The word EATS
125 The word END
127 The word FOLDS
129 The word HERE
131 The word HOLE
134 The word LIMPS
136 The word MISSING
137 The word NEAR
138 The word NO
140 The word PASS
141 The word PFFF
143 The word SAVES
146 The word SEEDS
148 The word SULLIES
150 The word TATTERS
152 The word WAITING
153 The word WALKS
154 The word YET
from ABOVE THE SKY BENEATH THE EARTH (2015)
159 The Boy
160 Gnashing Teeth
161 The Revolt Against the End of Summer
162 Time Is
163 Man and Truth
164 WWW
165 Olympics
166 O E
167 My Body Is a Central Committee
168 Erasure of Possibilities
169 Magic Square
170 The Whole World Is a Uterus
171 My Mother
172 Permanently on Loan
173 The World Is Without Culprits
174 Sweet Snow
175 The Sky
176 White Shirt
177 Elementary Laws
178 Lindens in the Desert Sand
179 I Feel Everything
180 Behind a Curtain
181 No One
182 A Place
183 Above the Sky Beneath the Earth
184 Five Assertions
from TESTIMONY (2020)
186 You ask me
187 Ancestors
191 Between this
192 On a plate
193 Ant
194 The world will return
195 Rain teaches us
196 When someone asks
NEW POEMS
198 In the children’s hospital
200 My dear father
201 My little god
202 Only tonight
203 Mountain
204 In front of the border
205 Swimming pool
206 Syracuse
207 Outside a station of the metro
208 What are our poets smiling at?
209 An old poet
210 Pines
211 Dead kitten
212 The Sun Walks Behind Me
213 What is half an hour
214 The Autobiography of H
