You have to give me your word nonetheless
the bed will never be moved from the place
where the cat lies down first. See how it curls
up in a ball, comfortable and soft,
upon a pile of pullovers we failed
to put away, just like an embryo
lodged deep inside its mother, or like snails
scattered across the sand. Our room is so
unworthy of its role, the couch without
a flowery throwover, or decorated
cushions, no hot chocolate sends a thread
of steam up on the lowly table, all
the light that falls on it comes from a bulb
of 60 watts, warm, yellowish, as if
we ate our evening meal with just one candle.
The cat, meanwhile, submerged in darkness, far
beyond the wave circles of splashing flame,
looks as if it’s keeping watch upon
the silent rituals that satisfy
our hunger. Spend five minutes gazing on
its almond-shaped eyes, and then deny this:
you cannot tell whether, in the half dark,
the cat’s pulsating, preparing to step
into the slow, thick, running water of
its dreams, or whether, in the fluctuating
liquid that bathes your iris, in that tense
and trembling watery mirror, all that throbs
is the unmoving phantom of a cat!
It’s wonderful, unspeakably so, don’t
you see? Am I the only one who thrills
before its majesty as expertly,
unhurriedly, distending its rounded
belly it turns over on one side?

November; darkness dawns. Slow sifts
of rain, eaves gurgle, boughs drip-drip.
Other-worldly time. Whoever wakes
falls straight to sleep, anew.

Will autumn have a morning?
Moist, black, slimy—the thicket
of dreaming catches skin, sleepers
strive to swim in it, struggling.

But still, a woman sits up in the dark,
tears herself from the tick of rain,
and listens to another pulse:
a living water laps inside her ears.

And she feels it’s time for sun to rip night open; smiles and strokes her warm, taut abdomen, the embryo snug up against her palm.

The faces of the mountain ranges, grinding strata,
the Mariana Trench of the unfathomed mind, the lava
in the soul; why, who knows

why the wind-felled forests, the hobo ravens
live and die, the straying rivers,
penguins on their shirking floes,

the tattered helices of the cloud,
the blinded wandering of the flood,
why, if it can not scent

a course it simply drags its sad ways
and anywhere it goes it’s war,
death scores a trench


with names, with birth, with love
with which we should not have
entangled the earth,

our towns, our voice-throwing fortune,
the deep valley basin of memories, living lines,
you see, how they all go forth,

wandering, and have no way of their own;
always, always, it’s the mothers, the orphanhood to which, again,
they’re giving birth.

It’s as if this moment were a long time ago.
As if her eyes saw wonders
she would only discover in good twenty years.
The eyes of a child are unfit:
but let’s see these wonders with befitting eyes:
this late spring afternoon
in faultless flood of light,
it is this moment when out they come, hop hop hop,
and the entire nursery is transported home,
and even the dog comes to pick up little Daniel.
Two mothers, at the open gate, incapable of ending
their conversation. They jam the entrance:
a busty baby-sitter with the twins
drops her sun-glasses right beside the dog.
“Oh, a fox! Oh my god, let’s run!”
The car is the house, the house is the chick coop,

and people are chickens and hens too.
The sky, cloudless, it is twenty degrees.
It’s twenty years ago.

Her eyes. As if this minute held
the golden age, and nothing else, for ever.
Oh my god. What will I do now?
What will I do?

A medieval legend tells how a very small, utterly helpless
child was stolen from its mother. Falling into the hands
of people traders, it was sold off in a distant land.
The mother set off in search, did everything she could
to gather news, came close to finding him, but the owners
had already passed him on. They told her wonderful things.
While she hunted, he became a man, would soon be old.
They said he brought peace everywhere he went. Letting go of him
was like letting go of life. But others had to be helped too.
His mother lived in constant expectation, also fearing
the meeting might prove more than she could bear.
She therefore put it off until it was too late.