Selections Read online

  Voices from the gallowstree,

  where slowwood and quickwood exchange

  and exchange rings.

  Voices, fullthroated, in slag, where even the

  Infinite shovels, (hearr-) slimy runnel.

  Set the boats out here, child, which I

  manned:

  When midships the squall takes command, the bolts

  strain together.

  Jacobsvoice:

  The tears.

  The tears in brothereye.

  One left hanging, grew.

  We dwell there.

  Breathe, that

  it let go.

  Voices from within the ark:

  It is

  only the mouths are saved. You

  who go down, hear us too.

  No

  voice — a

  slowsound, timestrange, to your

  thoughts bestowed, here, at last

  hereawakens: a

  fruitleaf, eyesized, deep

  scratched; it

  oozes, will not

  scab over.

  TENEBRAE

  Nigh are we, Lord,

  near and graspable.

  Gripped already, Lord,

  in each other clutched, as though

  the body of each of us were

  your body, Lord.

  Pray, Lord,

  Pray to us,

  we are nigh.

  Windskew we went on,

  we went on, to bend ourselves

  at hollow and hole.

  To the trough we went, Lord.

  It was blood, it was,

  which you had spilt, Lord.

  It glittered.

  It cast your image into our eyes, Lord.

  Eyes and mouth hang so open and empty, Lord.

  We have drunk, Lord.

  The blood and the image within the blood, Lord.

  Pray, Lord.

  We are nigh.

  SPEECH-GRILLE

  Eye-orb between the bars.

  Ciliary lid

  rows upwards,

  releases a gaze.

  Iris, swimmer, dreamless and dim:

  the sky, heart-gray, must be near.

  Skew, in the iron socket,

  the smoldering splinter.

  By the sense of light

  you guess the soul.

  (Were I like you. Were you like me.

  Did we not stand

  under one tradewind

  We are strangers.)

  The tiles. Upon them,

  close together, the two

  heart-gray pools:

  two

  mouthfuls of silence.

  MATIERE DE BRETAGNE

  Furze-light, yellow, the slopes

  fester skywards, the thorn

  woos the wound, a knell tolls

  within, it is evening, the void

  rolls its seas to devotion,

  the blood-sail steers at you.

  Arid, aground,

  the bed behind you, sedge-choked

  its hour, above,

  at the star, the milky

  narrows chatter in mud, stone-borer,

  below, bushy, gapes into blueness, a shrub of

  ephemeralness, lovely,

  hails your memory.

  (Did you know me,

  hands? I followed

  the forking road you showed me, my mouth

  spit out its chippings, I walked, my time,

  a wandering snow-wall, cast its shadow — did you know me?)

  Hands, the thorn-

  wooed wound, a knell,

  hands, the void, its seas,

  hands, in the furze-light, the

  blood-sail

  steers at you.

  You

  you teach

  you teach your hands

  you teach your hands you teach

  you teach your hands

  to sleep

  STRETTO

  Spent into

  the ground

  with unmistakable trace:

  grass, written asunder. The stones, white,

  with the shadows of the stalks:

  Stop reading: look!

  Stop looking: go!

  Go, your hour

  has no sisters, you are —

  are at home. A wheel, slowly,

  rolls by itself, the spokes

  clamber,

  clamber over the darkening field, night

  needs no stars, nothing

  is asking about you.

  Nothing

  asking about you -

  The place, where they lay, it has

  a name — it has

  none. They didn't lie there. Something

  lay between them. They

  didn't see through it.

  Didn't see, no,

  spoke about

  words. Nothing

  woke up,

  sleep

  came over them.

  Came, came. Nothing

  asking -

  It's me, me,

  I lay between you, I was

  open, was

  audible, I ticked to you, your breath

  obeyed,I

  am still the one, you

  still are sleeping.

  Am still the one —

  Years.

  Years, years, a finger

  feels down and up, feels

  around:

  where the seams are, feel them, here

  it ripped wide apart, here

  it grew back together — who

  covered it up?

  Covered it

  up — who?

  Came, came.

  Came a word, came,

  came through the night,

  wanted to shine, wanted to shine.

  Ashes.

  Ashes, ashes.

  Night.

  Night-and-night. — To

  the eye, go, to the moist.

  To

  the eye, go,

  to the moist —

  hurricanes,

  hurricanes, from wherever,

  particle drift, the other,

  you

  know the one, we

  read it in the book, it was

  meaning.

  Was, was

  meaning. How

  did we grasp

  each other — with

  these

  hands?

  And it stood written that.

  Where? We

  did a silence over it,

  venomstilled, huge,

  a

  green

  silence, a sepal, a

  thought of plant life hung from it -

  green, yes,

  hung, yes,

  under spiteful

  skies.

  Of, yes,

  plant life.

  Yes.

  Hurricanes, par-

  ticle drift, some

  time left, left,

  to try it on the stone — it

  was hospitable, it

  didn't interrupt. How

  good we had it:

  gritty and stringy. Stalked,

  dense;

  clustery and raying; kidneyshaped,

  flattish and

  lumpy; loose, all

  branching, it, it

  didn't interrupt, it

  spoke,

  spoke gladly to dry eyes before it closed them.

  Spoke, spoke.

  Was, was.

  We

  did not give way, stood

  in the midst,

  pore structure, and

  it came.

  Came up to us, came

  right through, stitched

  invisibly, stitched

  to the last membrane,

  and

  the world, a thousand crystal,

  shot forth, shot forth.

  Shot forth, shot forth.

  Then-

  nights, unmixed, circles,

  green or blue, red

  squ
ares: the

  world puts its innermost

  into play with the new

  hours. — Circles,

  red or black, bright

  squares, no

  flight shadows,

  no

  measuring board, no

  smoke soul rises and plays too.

  Rises and

  plays too -

  In owl flight, near

  leprosy turned to stone,

  near

  our fled hands, in

  the latest rejection,

  over the

  target on

  the ruinous wall:

  visible, once

  again: the

  furrows, the

  choirs, back then, the

  psalms. Ho, ho

  sanna.

  So

  temples still stand. A

  star

  still has its light.

  Nothing,

  nothing is lost.

  Ho-

  sanna.

  In the owl flight, here,

  the chatter, day gray,

  of ground water traces.

  (—day gray,

  of

  groundwater traces -

  Spent

  into the ground

  with

  the unmistakable

  trace:

  grass.

  Grass,

  written asunder.)

  FROM DIE NIEMANDSROSE/ THE NOONESROSE

  THERE WAS EARTH IN THEM, and they dug.

  They dug and dug, so passed

  their day away, their night. And they praised not God,

  who, as they heard, wished all this,

  who, as they heard, knew all this.

  They dug and heard no more;

  they became not wise, made up no song, devised no kind of tongue

  for themselves. They dug.

  There came a stillness, and there came a storm, there came the

  oceans all. I dig, you dig, and so too digs the worm, and the

  singing there means: They dig.

  O one, O none, O nobody, you:

  Where to go, with nowhere to go?

  O you dig and I dig, and I dig unto you,

  and a-finger awakens us the ring.

  ZURICH, ZUM STORCHEN

  for Nelly Sachs

  Of too much was the talk, of

  too little. Of you

  and again-you, of

  the dimming through brightness, of

  Jewishness, of

  your God.

  Thereof.

  The day of an Ascension, the cathedral stood

  off there, came with something of gold over

  the water.

  Of your God was the talk, I spoke

  against him, I

  let the heart that I had

  hope:

  for

  its highest, deathrattled, its

  cavilling word —

  Your eye looked at me, looked away,

  your mouth

  addressed the eye, I heard:

  We

  dont (really) know, you know(?),

  we

  dont (really) know,

  what's

  worth.

  PSALM

  Noone kneads us again from earth and loam,

  noone evokes our dust.

  Noone.

  Praised be you, noone.

  Because of you we wish

  to bloom.

  Against

  you.

  A nothing

  were we, are we, will

  we be, blossoming:

  the nothing's-, the noonesrose.

  With

  its pistil soulbright,

  its stamen heavencrazed,

  its crown red

  from the purpleword that we sang

  over, o over

  its thorn.

  TUBINGEN, JANNER

  Eyes con-

  vinced to go blind.

  Their — "a

  riddle is pure

  origin" —, their

  remembrance of

  swimming Holderlin-towers, gull-

  blown.

  Visits of drowned carpenters by

  these

  diving words:

  If,

  if a man,

  if a man was born, today, with

  the lightbeard of

  the patriarchs: he could,

  speaking of these

  days, he

  could

  but babble and babble.

  always, always

  agagain.

  ("Pallaksch. Pallaksch.")

  ALCHEMICAL

  Silence, cooked like gold, in

  carbonized

  hands.

  Great, gray,

  close, like all that's lost,

  sister figure:

  All the Names, all the al-

  names. So much

  to be blessed ashes. So much

  won land

  above

  the light, o so light

  soul-

  rings.

  Great. Gray. Cinder-

  less.

  You. Back then.

  You with the livid

  bitten open bud.

  You in the wine-flood.

  (Isn't it true, us too

  this clock released?

  Good,

  good, how your word died past here.)

  Silence, cooked like gold, in

  carbonized, carbonized

  hands.

  Finger, smoke-thin. Like crowns, aircrowns

  around —

  Great. Gray. Trace-

  less.

  King-

  ly-

  RADIX, MATRIX

  Like one speaks to the stone, like

  you,

  to me from the abyss, from

  a homeland hereward, dis-

  sister, hereward

  thrown one, you,

  you pretime for me,

  you me in the nothing of a night,

  you in the but-night en-

  countered one, you

  but-you —:

  Back when, when I was not there,

  back when, when you

  paced off the field, alone:

  Who,

  who was it, that

  lineage, the murdered one, the one

  standing black into the sky:

  Rod and ball —?

  (Root.

  Root of Abraham. Root of Jesse. No one's

  root — oh

  ours.)

  Yes,

  as one speaks to the stone, as

  you

  with my hands thereto

  and into nothingness grab, thus

  is, what is here:

  this receptacle

  too gapes,

  this

  downward

  is the one of the wild-

  blooming crowns.

  BLACKEARTH. black

  earth you, times-

  mother

  Despair:

  One from the hand and its

  wound to you De-

  livered shuts

  your calyxes.

  TO ONE WHO STOOD AT THE DOOR. One

  evening:

  to him

  I let my word out —: to the

  goitred I saw him trot, to the

  half-

  hearted, the

  muddy booted footsoldier

  born brother, the

  blood-glutted

  Gods-

  handiwork, the

  chittering little man.

  Rabbi, I rasped, Rabbi

  Loew:

  From him

  remove the word,

  for him

  write the living

  nothingness at heart,

  to him

  extend your two

  brokenfingers in grace-

  bestowing judgment.

  To him.

  Throw e
veningsdoor open too, Rabbi.

  Rip the morningsdoor off, Ra—

  MANDORLA

  In the almond — what stands in the almond?

  Nothing.

  What stands in the almond is Nothing.

  There it stands and stands.

  In Nothing — what stands there? The King.

  There the King stands, the King.

  There he stands and stands.

  Jew's curl, you'll not turn gray.

  And your eye — what does your eye stand on?

  On the almond your eye stands.

  Your eye, on Nothing it stands.

  Stands on the King, to him remains loyal, true.

  So it stands and stands.