Stumbling

 
They've come here and forgotten what conscience looks like.
Pressing fists against my face, screaming relentlessly,
tugging at one melancholy evening's brown gown,
keeping their rosary-draped right arms outstretched,
finding me alone, they slither serpent-like through clouds
into stars burning on tin roofs.
Where they took shelter, no one could see them.


Along the walls of silence, strange visitors arrive
wanting to trace the source of stone-heavy scents clinging to my shoulders.
First I curse them in gentle tones,
then scold them loudly—nothing reaches their ears.
And later still, in the terrible panic of solitude, running a little distance away,
I begin to scream………
—Can you hear me? Is anyone listening? Come here, come at once! You'll find me in this garden of fallen leaves! Believe me, I'm human. Two hands, two muscles inherited just like yours. Look—see how a pair of thick lips hang from this copper-colored face! I beg for your help, hoping my wrists might float in seas of more beautiful colors. I plead with you, come here alone with a few others, surround them, make a commotion. Ask them for poetry—you'll find nothing there but blood. They'll give you plenty of money, good hot food, wine and women to love. Kiss life, love lies! ………and hearing my call, you'll come to me only to forget me! I know I'm not alone in this world; many others live as I do. Good people have learned too easily today to become unconscious or indifferent. I beg you, never let my poetry reach young lips; they curse so easily. You book-reading good people, listen! Instead of answering my tears, go ahead and abuse me, but from that distance, from there, don't pour the molten body of immortal music into your obscene, ruined molds with your wrinkled brows. The sound of despair's wings beating reaches my ears. You can tell when classical dance loses its rhythm; therefore, I recognize and watch with tired eyes how after one great storm, instead of peace, another great storm comes. All this is really nothing. What actually happened was: in one of the thousand homes in that settlement, there was a wedding. They went there, everyone went there, the whole world went there. Only I was forgotten here.


The black and blue night sky wakes at the wrong time.
Rows of shrubs stand guard over the road. Then you can see, far off, like alert dogs,
the disciplined shadows of trees hanging in streams all around.
In the spinning cup of the world's largest flower, life
glows like pearl-colored wine. Disappointed angels
come running carelessly. Meanwhile, I see today's moon
is also smaller, lighter than before. Well, that's good!


Since yesterday I've noticed that some light
has been stolen from my eyes. Nature's judgment
can often be seen with one's own eyes! I'm sitting
on a stone atop an olive-colored hill,
easily, peacefully. These days I only
become restless when I see graveyards!


Shrinking and shrinking, I become a small sapling
that stumbles even trying to grow in front of the house,
whose spine is tired, bent, dry!
When evening falls and someone passes my dark well
without noticing me, suddenly I see
I'm walking beside them.
Riding on the back of damp air,
enduring the long march of rustling leaf battalions,
going to watch the neighbors quarrel, I see
the bitter smoke from their kitchens driving away summer.


Watching all this from afar, I felt we're all
standing on the shore of an ancient sea
of strangely delicate black sighs.
Here some dead are alive, some living are dead.


My laughter spreads across the sky,
warm, fresh air floats by,
bringing saffron evening and breathless sounds.
Some resentment of gray clouds has gathered in the sky.
Youth-scorched and shy virgin girls, lying in bed,
bid farewell to despair in the clouds and draw trembling-eyed dreams.
Seeing this, my wild, causeless laughter has flown away.
When I was fastening bells to pray in one corner
of the indifferent field, just then I saw the sky slowly collapsing.