Author’s Note: The following is an active, experimental dialogue with a beloved poet; texts are constructed around single verses from the German poet, distanced from the original context and used as crumbs to ignite a new poetic explosion.
Nights close
inside
my palm,
I touch you
and you are ink.
***
Too many things already said,
too much already breathed,
in my palm
only a stone spit out again
small as
an almond
(the sweet part is too
hidden and the shell
is too hard)
Count me among the almonds Zähle mich zu den Mandeln
***
The tongue flies anyplace, rolls off,
throw it away, throw it away wirf sie weg, wirf sie weg
and you shall have it back; dann hast du sie wieder
it will be a whirling in your ear
a wing that opens to measure the sky.
***
When the mouth
spits the word,
there’s a rhythm, between
“me and you”
that’s a clod
sliced by a blade,
worm that then
finds life again.
***
This twisting
of feet, like walking
in sleep, like
the story in
an ear already glass
***
With the eye- mit den Augen-
scissors I cut schere
your profile, fixing you
with the time-blade
that never rusts.
***
What’s uprooted comes back together… was abriss, wachst wieder zusammen…
the name, the name, the hand, the hand: den Namen, den Namen, die Hand, die Hand
on my hand
balances the leaf
that in this light
does not grow:
put it in a glove
because the wind will shred it,
put it in a pocket so that
from here it can’t revive.
***
Sink me away, Sink mir weg…wirf dich
throw yourself out, aus
here only mirror
burns, black sun
where letters roll.
***
The shoulder blade is already the ax
a tablet of unwritten laws:
to embrace tires
to point traps
to grow twists
From Da una Crepa (Turin: Giulio Einaudi Editore, 2014). By arrangement with the author. Translation © 2015 by Wallis Wilde-Menozzi. All rights reserved.
