Where did I wake up? where am I? Where'smy right side, where's the left? where's above, andwhere's below? Take it easy, that's my bodyon its back, that's the hand I useto hold…

Grave Brahms and elegiac Schubert, / a few songs, Chopin's third sonata

Nowhere has denying reigned as rife as in this not which is outsitting me here.Oh, if only death would outstare itself for ever in its iron mirror. God, what a down-at-heel hope for a voiceless evaporation…

Yesterday, yes, I still existed here: in this pitiful winestain, in these paupered words way past their prime,in that handshake which I will never manage to hold in any of my handbooks, and which under…

With one hand in my lap, with my other hand on the table. My head is located above it;in which a landscape drops anchor, sun-drenched. It is one moonless evening. While his son carefully draws the sculls…

Since nobody was there anyway, and since it is not blocked off, it's time for a walk once again along the brink of the beach, where all of a sudden the woods held back, or have withdrawn by degrees.Thinking…

One fine day it was night. I seemed to be just about to catch my first fish. Suddenly it allconspires against me. It was too late to unbait my hook. I head for home, humming in my sleep, to worship the…

If later, or sooner, it is, or becomes, sayable-this is the most thingable it will be; best of all, let my text encircle someonewho foists it on himself, or by whom it's fobbed off with itself; if…

"Then they went away too." Hardly had I known them. I also hardly stayed behind. I would have liked to write something down, but I had forgotten to writeit down. If you listen to people, it's…

1 As simple as a drop of water, as clear as a splinter of birch, Because the foal falls patiently, cautiously out of the horse and is able to stand, And the fish unfolds like a metal tear and is able…

Irreversible is the river on whose back dead leaves swirl. Irreversible are words- the dust of roads mingled with breath, warm breath that sticks to our trembling lips like fog to a boat.Irreversible…

living on an island far from cities with traffic lights and people.Outside we hear the rustlings of a bed of reeds where the wind with its toothless mouth blows luring in tides.A boat is moored on the…

Large, gray, sprawled like an old elephant. Winter is ending. Low, sloping roofs are overturned boats slumbering along the shores of drowsiness.Twenty years of an oak tree's life is burned instantly…

He comes to me every day with a cruel bounce in his stepwith eyes darting like little green flames—the town postman in a heavy, damp coatjovially announcing he has nothing for me.I see his blue…

Without fail Sundays at the cinema were always rainy days big black umbrellas clashing against the ticket booth. The doorman among the torn stubs looked like a watercolor hung crookedly on a kitchen wall.…

It's not time for a change. As long as I can remember it's never been time for a change. Like cars that screech to a halt houses stand poised in their old breeding ground of rotten acacia leaves.From…

AlifYou're not beginning . . .It's an eternity, you know . . .I mean, the ever-after, you knowNo matter, then.Raise your cavalryBut do not leave behind the horizon,Or the sea . . . or the soillines…

1 Here I am you alone In this mad, gaping Hell Here I am you alone and death altogether With its predators and its seers and the informers Perhaps I am arriving at The limit of my possibilities For you…

The snow comes late this year. Violet shadowsdoze like shepherds rounda white fire.The swaying shadow of a fence looks like a woman's clavicle—a woman who dreams of her lover's snowy journey…

AlifYou're not beginning . . .It's an eternity, you know . . .I mean, the ever-after, you knowNo matter, then.Raise your cavalryBut don't set out for the horizon,Or the sea . . . or the soillines…

what is watching always comes to an end: and the day! and the world! . . it is the unique the unceasing - is…

to N. A. in your presence even the toes are as if they remembered! and the mind more strongly pierces our head in…

(after the Grasshoppers of Velimir Khlebnikov and e.e. cummings) to my son Andrey grasshopper-sign flickers over field…

in dust is no vowel. . . death is a sound: a shout - to God? he - in the surface of dust: is what then - a gleam? oh…

to W. Woroczylski behind my back - it seemed - were islands: of the terror-idea! - as if a certain…

oh clearly with gathered force everywhere it shows itself: skyglow of the year like features of the land: drawing: from…

to V. S. but you are not the surrounding of such a one but a stair in yourself where poverty is like skyglow: oh ice-holes…

whole - with a whisper of ordering of the firmament and as out of the shining face in a time of sorrow - mine - I create it< and…

LV Democracy's secret In free, general elections, with secret ballots There, too, is music's concealment, its inaccessibility, eye to eye Where…

Iraqi poet Nazik al-Mala'ika greets the new year with mixed emotions.

Migration is another name for exile made gentler by the alphabet.

Why do we fear words? / If their thorns have once wounded us, / then they have also wrapped their arms around our necks / and shed their sweet scent upon our desires.

The wind gasps with the midday heat, like a nightmare in the late afternoon And on the masts, it continues to fold, to spread for departure The gulf is crowded with them--laborers…

I remember as-Sayyab screaming into the Gulf in vain: Iraq, Iraq. Nothing but Iraq. And nothing but an echo replies I remember as-Sayyab, in that Sumerian space A woman triumphed over the sterility of…

Many a one has sunk in the abyss of horrid silence, and you among them, slender ghost whom I evoked with tools that are improbable, a little pile of grammars and of dictionaries, or now, with more urgency…

And so we repeat the round / of night and day

I think my heart has never been / like this / so warm and red.

If this is life—how pure!