Encyclopædia MERZ
poems
1992 - 2007
Toronto
1992 - 1993
This is the city and I am one of the citizens...
Walt Whitman
cities cities of my birth and
growth bare barren streets
a man walking by and a woman
standing at a shopwindow
and all the days I spent within
your walls taking refuge
in the deepest thought
my cities of supplication
for them who have fallen or
never tried to break through
the flames for them whose
blood circulates in my veins
creation procreation endless
for never seen men who dwell
in my gestures without names
for women who spread my sperm
on their bellies touch themselves
thinking of me for these forgotten
people invisible inaudible i start
singing tearing each sound out of
my being plunging into the
unknown to tame the powers
of the universe
You’re smart and beautiful, almost
seductive, but I can’t touch you.
And the two pockets on your shirt,
covering your swinging breasts,
a pack of cigarettes in the one and
a lighter in the other. Oh fire!
I’m burning, like that rod between
your lips.
Don’t put me out!
To be bereft or to bereave,
what is the difference? And
at night when the substance
of existence overcomes us,
what is the self sinking into?
Perhaps oblivion and myth
are exchanging words with
one another.
Harsh harmony emerges
and melts into madness.
You didn’t know that, you
didn’t want to jump in
the river from the bridge.
You were playing between
the two solid sides.
You are drowning in the
sound of the moving air.
we have left the sea abandoned
the gray waves the foam the rhythm
of the earth we have left the
mountains and arrived in a flat land
of withering grass and leaves
and the loneliness of the forest or
the girl’s body surrounded by her
aura with a distance inside like roots
growing in the trunk up to the
branches of the willow
Who can see through the streets without
distraction, not taking the messages of
the electric air?
Who can stop moving
between two lovers and their times,
separated from his own time untouchable?
Who can gaze into the yawning void of
the day, accepting, ever accepting?
Your face is covered with earth,
and I’m still lingering to look
at the heaviest weight that
lies in the autumn field.
The Chimney
The cloud, descending,
touches the top of the house,
surrounds the walls, the
doors, the windows. Later
the darkness, the night.
A chimney reaches the dome
of the sky and piercing it
discharges what is left from
the fire. Smoke dissolves
like salt in water.
Through the tears to childhood, to
the street of winter and deep snow.
summer mountains father
sighing at the sight of
i’d like to hide we grow
heavy at home i’m watching
him drinking wine
Spelling the words of the cosmos, their
huge initials, the eyes of children widen.
i’m empty but mother
fills me up with milk ‘til
i swell and start floating in
the room my eyes nailed on
her full breasts and nipples
I’m breathing your air,
eating your bread, drinking
your water to the last drop.
And I turn away suffocating,
starving, still thirsty,
only waiting for the rain.
But your death penetrates the
concrete walls, and flows
through the windows of the city.
Inexhaustible spring, it begins
to feed me.
Oneness in fragmentation, particulars
held by the immense light of bliss.
Following, following it I came
to dance and watch the dancers.
To listen and let the sound grow in me,
to touch you, strong and compassionate.
To see the seams of creation, contours
of houses and towers glowing at dusk.
water
she stands back
or steps forward
brown
green
an open fruit
she moves up
and down
blue blue
and secrets
revealed
to the grass
to the trees
We’re having a good time.
Three couples stuck in the
backyard with wine, music
and the stars above,
talking politics.
We could be anywhere with
anyone, but we are somewhere
with someone, partners,
rearrangeable, replaceable.
Six individuals.
A cloud cunjured up from the lake
lets a silent drop of rain fall. Only
one. Sunrays caress the trees.
Late afternoon. Traffic is slow
in the streets. An avenue. A passer-by.
A man lying on the grass.
A boy sitting on a stone, Buddha might
have sat the same way, in his time.
I used to live here.
for Arvo Pärt
return to the heart
timeless attention of a
beast and of a child
falling and sinking
to the blind core of the earth
repeating the same
the branches are the
roots and the sea is the sky
return to the light
Bookstores don’t exist, they glow in the
dark street, some vague hope or just an
empty light. Your poems don’t exist, but
somehow you’re here in my room or we
ride the bus together and talk. When we
enter a word the trees arrive at their
season and bear fruit. Why are they alive?
Why are you pounding on my door as if
you were here? Distances burning...
for Akira Kurosawa
Falling upwards we name
experience buried in the
bones, and recognize another
time hidden in fire.
Keeping vigil in the month of
dog days, when the nights grow
colder and dawn comes late,
our candles burning.
Broken glasses cannot reflect
a face with eyes that are
like pebbles hitting the window
and falling on the floor of an
unknown apartment.
We can hear children running,
gates opening, doorknobs
turning and parents questioning
endless, endless. We can never
see our own eyes.
Coming back to New York
is like raising the dead and
sending them to hell. I’m still
walking on Broadway with my
ex-wife or I sing a song on
Bleecker Street, both useless,
the wind is always cold and
novembers are always grey in big
cities. The pavement doesn’t
care about anyone walking on it.
I saw an old photograph,
Times Square in the Rain.
There’s joy in every rain, because
we never know when it comes.
I sold my wedding ring for 8 dollars.
The jeweller measured it and found
the gold too light. “We’ll melt it down”,
he said. “And I’m still broke”, I thought.
Later I bought 12 condoms on the money, and
remembered getting married exactly 8 years
before, and failing in maths at the age of 12.
I never liked numbers. That’s my Kabbalah.
Winter nights are filled with
music, with Schumann’s Novelettes,
with the sound of my guitar and
with wild jazz from the fifties.
I’m travelling in a country, in a
city unknown, where you’re with me.
But there’s only music here, a
strange vehicle of disciplined love.
It’s this simple: You’re going to
bed, expecting me to go with you.
I’m busy reading John Ashbery.
I’m pacing quietly in the room.
You’re already sleeping, your long,
brown hair covering my shoulder as
I lie watching your face in dim light.
Nothing else is happening right now.
I’ll remember these hours of desperation
when I leave again. I’ll commemorate the
emptiness I felt when the streets bounced
me off, as if there hadn’t been room for
strangers in the eyes of the passers-by.
But I know, this city will reach out for
me, showing itself inside out, revealing
the velvet moments of friendship and love.
Then I’ll remember a hotelroom in Athens,
a cold bed and a blanket with dry sperm
on it. Or I’ll think of a New Year’s Eve
in San Francisco four years later in
a similar hotel room and bed.
(The next day I walked down to the piers.
Seagulls were waiting for me there and
took my message to distant continents.)
An invisible knife cutting a hole inside me.
It’s moving in my bowels, and upward, slowly
slicing a shadow, my soul. Birds singing, trees
blossoming; snow falls, I’m wrapped up in ice.
Your soul is older than all the religions I know.
My time and experience is cradled by the joy
you give me, our coming. That thirty seconds of
happiness is unspeakable. It’s eternal.
It happened. The farmers left the village,
the shepherd the sheep, the hunter the deer.
No one stayed. And the land showed its face, clear,
crumpled, and a cloud covered the cleavage.
Or nothing happened, and it is the same
as if convulsion had shaken the earth.
The tower stood there still, inside the birth
of silence and the death of words and pain.
Speech was broken into pieces, scattered
on the ground, and the rotting, empty waste
soiled time and space throughout the ages.
In the beginning there was quietude.
Then Logos was born, spellbound and amazed
by the sight of stars and iron cages.
The quiet room and the evening will wait
for books that turn their pages by themselves,
for pictures with inward eyes and for late
hours of singing in empty temples.
The moment is buried under the bell
of violent noises, and the vanquished
roots of the day feed on a dried out well,
mediocre visions hide in the mist.
The distant Moon now shining in the dark,
a presence built from memories, a park
by the ocean, bathing in city lights.
The woman whose body, like the intense
prayers of the saints, sweet smell of incense,
is rising to take its place in the heights.
Crushed by a vision and comforted too
I lie abed, my thoughts penetrate
the air to reach a symbol above.
Then I descend to the ruined sea,
to the people at the shore, and
I see the poverty of their faces.
I see a mountain of wet clay and
bones, and the vapor of the earth,
a cloud passing in the infinite blue.
We would never fall, were we smoke,
fog or the cold morning wind, and even
the birds couldn’t follow our flight.
The darkness between childhood and old age,
the distance of the living from the dead
and the road from meditation to rage.
In the city behind me people dread
contemplation and they don’t remember
each other’s faces or the taste of bread
from summer evenings, so ancient, tender.
I can see a windmill beyond the wall
and a man with his wife by a river,
a family on a cart and three tall
trees stretching upward and growing below,
their roots and branches embrace the bird’s fall
into the empty air. A nest’s halo
forming the horizon, circles that glow
inside the rain, I can see the rainbow.
Girls, whorls of petals, opening themselves,
women dancing pregnant with the sky.
Morning light. The mist in the hour before dawn
and the frozen lake of the evening melt back
to the day, celebrating the Sun. In the middle
of the circle a dancer is spinning and becomes
a dot, an embryo of longing in the time-womb.
And the toddling feet of babies will later
tread the wrinkled ground, will walk on
graves, making horizontal lines. But an
iron cross will be erected, like a blade of
grass once broken, now grown tall, showing
the mark of a hiker’s footstep, and placed
between the brown earth and the grey clouds.
And entering the deep flames to inhabit the black
heart of fire and to rise in smoke unnoticeable.
Oblivious eyes fixed on the scornful smile of a
leaving woman, the banality of a restaurant stays,
inane noise of eating. The eyelids are rolled down
car windows, wind comes in to clear the dust away.
A diamond triangle emerges from a blind view.
A room and its walls,
a chair and its memories.
Window to a street and
to a tree. A dream.
The swish of her hair,
the sea of fear. Thirsty
pores, a thousand lungs
breathing, burning.
Her arms and tears are
a mountainside in summer
heat, bald branches and
stones, immoveable wind.
Rain conquers an iron
land at the end of the
gutter. Uninhabited
sorrow, forever fallen.
Cruel days are coming, only to
see if we can survive. More and
more numbers will appear on the
ruled sheets and all the letters
will be locked up in squares,
and the hands will be covered
with the dirt of our streets.
But I’ll be far away by then,
in an ancient city with its
dead people alive and alive
people dead. And I will wash
my face in a fountain, with
the water of tranquil memories
of unconquerable peace.
Cold September nights –
the freedom of falling leaves
on morning mountains.
Your eyes, two seadrops, veiled blue,
asleep sky behind the cloud of sight.
And wounds revealed, my eyes, two dark
pits that cannot rest anymore, but hide.
The distant voices are burning flowers.
Far from the roads rivers forking and
uniting, and the villages are in flames.
It is summer. The city is buried in
sunshine and resurrected in rain.
Behind transparent walls we eat and
make love, but we don’t look at each other.
You could be in the other house with your
husband or with a servant. I want to be
in your bed, I want to be in you.
My mother’s watching me through your
eyes and wishes she were you.
I still have to wait to be released.
There was joy in the rustling leaves,
it filled the wind with warmth. And
an ancient scent entered the air,
a fragrance, fragile as a straw
of hair and unbroken as the breath
of children. Everything happened
at once, past and future departings
were gathered in one touch. The lips
were dry and thirsty fingertips caressed
the velvet skin, and as of two horses,
the manes were intertwined and moist.
a charming and eloquent
dance
andante
strings straining
your smile open
mouth and legs
your hand leading me inside
my blood is waging war on
my bones
turning them into
flesh
my heart hardens into
one of my ribs
that
will turn into
you
entangled with my limbs
as we have always been
The new day of militant boredom
cannot wake me up from dreaming, where
the colors are deep, with glittering,
illuminated bodies swimming in them.
I choose a color, orange, this time,
and I plunge into it, I paint myself
with it, like a Mohawk Indian ready to
fight, ready to kill anyone to protect
the sacred fire of his ancestors.
mist covers his face
but you can see the clothes
of crimson silk and royal
blue velvet he’s wearing
what’s his skin like? how
does it feel to touch his
back? to pull him closer and
smell his warm breath?
to be on top or under his
dark body when his eyes
start burning and his glance
pierces the damp night?
when all solid substances
melt to a pond of blood
of virgins after their first
time with the unknown?
I want to use you and I
don’t want you to use me.
What would happen, if one
day I’d completely shut up?
Never a word. Not even one!
With overwhelming tenderness
I’m touching the fence of the
backyard. I pour out my heart
on rough surfaces. Not the sea.
I don’t like the sea anymore.
I brought two blind children
in this constellation of cities.
They cannot eat or walk without
me. Funny creatures. They often
crawl on all fours in the house.
I have never been desperate
about anything. I know myself.
And my own strength killing me.
Somebody behind the windowpane
stroking my face and smiling.
They all bid goodbye to me, though
without words, only by dropping the
masks from their faces.
One girl was still angry and tired,
another was distracted and distant.
The third was speaking, but I
didn’t hear anything, her eyes were
silent and her touch was cold.
And the fourth girl? I remember her
fading figure in a crowded street.
The last one I see every day, but it
doesn’t mean anything, I’m already
somewhere else, somebody else.
All of us have failed somehow.
What I build I have to destroy.
In a dream I was a wall, standing
in front of you. And you, caressing,
took me in your warm, wet mouth,
piece by piece, brick by brick, until
I collapsed.
The aura around her was lit
by a light shining inward. He
sneaked in her mouth down to her
belly and spread himself on its
bottom searching for an opening.
When he found it he leaked
through the crack and put out
the gentle fire. She was crying.
The empty space getting bigger
and rain’s falling out of it, endless.
You recline on the bed after the bath
and I contemplate your full nakedness.
Your hands, soft palms and long
fingers, the intimacy of your arms
and shoulders in the armpits,
like children hiding in the bushes.
Your nipples, two mountaintops,
and the fountain in the valley,
your navel, where invisible water
runs out to nourish the land.
And a dark cave, the beginning
of history and the end of time,
healing herb in the opening of
a warm stone, fertile ground.
Your legs, terrible towers of the
ancients laid down on the earth
that we may find each other and
join in celebration and pain.
And your neck holding up your
head, a chalice of overflowing
red wine, your intelligence.
Your whole being. The universe.
It was a bad dream. In the morning anger
took over his thoughts like an army with
the general shouting, “Break out!” or
“Hit the target!” He didn’t. He was no
soldier, just a naked, shivering atom.
Now he’s lying in a dark and cold room.
The hermaphrodite appears, she has two
sagging breasts, a tiny, hairless cock on
her belly and a huge bare vagina, that
looks like raw meat preserved in salt.
And she says, “Make love to me, eat my
pussy.” He turns away disgusted, trying
to find the door, but the soldiers
arrive forcing him back on his bed
where there is no escape, no waking up.
Homeward bound from noisy places
I can feel silence holding on to me,
and as I’m walking, the snow becomes
evident, so real that it isn’t cold
anymore. The night is full of light
and I don’t know what fills up the
blank, quivering sky with serenity.
What I saw is unspeakable,
so how can I find words?
What I heard was inaudible,
so why should I try to play?
Neither pen nor instrument
will help me in my need, but
you, to whom the earth opens
its dark belly, and whom the
sky protects with its huge,
blue umbrella when the universe
is sending black rain to those
who live far from its realm.
The darkness and the light
visible now, even tangible.
Why didn’t you respond when I
touched your marble shoulder?
All the others were protected.
He was out there in the street,
standing on the sidewalk and
fading into the distance as we
got higher up in the sky.
He’s lying down on green grass
under the foliage of the wind.
He has conjured up and sent
away the spirits, and now
he’s just like one of us.
Grass, clothes, noises, the
muffled sound of knocking and
pounding on gates and walls.
The desire of breaking out. The
incredible melody in his head.
Who could be stronger than the one who doesn’t
love, the one who drags his women away, like
a vulture tearing a carcass into pieces? He’s
making love to death, and his victims don’t
even look back at the other lover, who was
eating their beauty, like an escapee stuffing
raw vegetables in his mouth, a dark field
around him, the moon rising over the horizon.
Her hair of shining pearls is let down on
her shoulders. Purple blouse and skirt, the
clothes of a dummie. Then the steps of a
dummie,artificial movements. And her eyes,
that never knew tears gazing at his chest.
He’s trying to make love to her, but stops.
His lap is covered with blood, and the eyes,
his eyes, that never knew tears stop shining.
The walls are torn down by fear, and fear
disintegrates in little black holes on the floor,
now hanging in the air, without a house
to contain it. No rooms, doors or windows.
This dangling darkness is my castle, the only
certainty I know, but you’re still asking me
about a secret. I’ve given you everything, my
blood’s all that’s left me. Is it what you want?
The twofold experience of muteness and
silence. Peace in a shell, air hovering
inside, then it breaks out of the hollow.
A bleeding stone. The heat of a cunt.
Crumbs of memories, maybe the sunlight
in a summer afternoon, drunk relatives
at a wedding, the softness of a mother’s
breasts, a woman whispering in the dark.
Maybe hope, that someone will stop asking
questions after a fully lived day, after
working in a factory or hiding in a trench.
Maybe despair, the lack of desire to ask.
Maybe nipples and milk, a baby’s wet lips
or the taste of coffee, tobacco and wine.
Maybe the magician. Neither a hero nor a
madman. But the father of two children.
Don Juan died at the age of fifty-one.
He wasn’t dragged down to hell, and
there’s no hell anyway. In a house
afar, somewhere in the mountains,
Don Juan slept into his death after
making love to the still young and
beautiful peasant woman, Zerlina.