Air
Naturally it is night.
Under the overturned lute with
its
One string I am going my way
Which as a strange sound.
This way the dust, that way the
dust.
I listen to both sides
But I keep right on.
I remember the leaves sitting in
judgment
And then winter.
I remember the rain with its bundle
of roads.
The rain taking all its roads.
Nowhere.
Young as I am, old as I am,
I forget tomorrow, the blind man.
I forget the life among the buried
windows.
The eyes in the curtains.
The wall
Growing through the immortelles.
I forget silence
The owner of the smile.
This must be what I wanted to be doing,
Walking at night between the two deserts,
Singing.
For the Anniversary of My Death
Every year without knowing it I have passed
the day
When the last fires will wave to me
And the silence will set out
Tireless traveller
Like the beam of a lightless star
Then I will no longer
Find myself in life as in a strange garment
Surprised at the earth
And the love of one woman
And the shamelessness of men
As today writing after three days of rain
Hearing the wren sing and the falling cease
And bowing not knowing to what
Some Last Questions
What is the head
A. Ash
What are the eyes
A. The wells have fallen in and have
Inhabitants
What are the feet
A. Thumbs left after the auction
No what are the feet
A. Under them the impossible road is moving
Down which the broken necked mice push
Balls of blood with their noses
What is the tongue
A. The black coat that fell of the wall
With sleeves trying to say something
What are the hands
A. Paid
No what are the hands
A. Climbing back down the museum wall
To their ancestors the extinct shrews that will
Have left a message
What is the silence
A. As though it had a right to more
Who are the compatriots
A. They make the stars of bone
Savonarola
Unable to endure my world and calling the
failure God, I will destroy yours.
It Is March
It is March and black dust falls
out of the books
Soon I will be gone
The tall spirit who lodged here
has
Left already
On the avenues the colorless thread
lies under
Old prices
When you look back there is always
the past
Even when it has vanished
But when you look forward
With your dirty knuckles and the
wingless
Bird on your shoulder
What can you write
The bitterness is still rising in
the old mines
The fist is coming out of the egg
The thermometers out of the mouths
of the corpses
At a certain height
The tails of the kites for a moment
are
Covered with footsteps
Whatever I have to do has not yet
begun
Dead Hand
Temptations still nest in it like
basilisks.
Hang it up till the rings fall.
December Night
The cold slope is standing in darkness
But the south of the trees is dry
to the touch
The heavy limbs climb into the moonlight
bearing feathers
I came to watch these
White plants older at night
The oldest
Come first to the ruins
And I hear magpies kept awake by
the moon
The water flows through its
Own fingers without end
Tonight once more
I find a single prayer and it is not for
men
Wish
The star in my
Hand is falling
All the uniforms know what's no use
May I bow to Necessity not
To her hirelings
Whenever I Go There
Whenever I go there everything is changed
The stamps on the bandages the titles
Of the professors of water
The portrait of Glare the reasons
for
The white mourning
In new rocks new insects are sitting
With the lights off
And once more I remember that the
beginning
Is broken
No wonder the addresses are torn
To which I make my way eating the
silence of animals
Offering snow to the darkness
Today belongs to few and tomorrow
to no one
When
You Go Away
When you go away the wind clicks
around to the north
The painters work all day but at
sundown the paint falls
Showing the black walls
The clock goes back to striking
the same hour
That has no place in the years
And at night wrapped in the bed of ashes
In one breath I wake
It is the time when the beards of the dead
get their growth
I remember that I am falling
That I am the reason
And that my words are the garment of what
I shall never be
Like the tucked sleeve of a one-armed boy