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A l i e n _ D r e a m s

From the cycle THE GREY ANGEL (Nea):
THE GREY ANGEL (1/2)
SALT AND DEATH (1/2/3)
GRASS(1/2)

ANNUAL CYCLE OF WALKING (Deogae)
NARCISSUS' WASTELAND (Deogae)
EXCAVATION OF THE SEA (Deogae)
NEW HOME (The Beast And The Limpid)

JACOB THE CHALLENGER

Isn't it already too late, Jacob?
Another day endless and dim,
the road spread everywhere.

You know it too well now
- the pebbles, the gray,
the amphorae looming from the unshaped rocks.

You swear not to believe anymore,
not to ever seek Him again.
Yet you still hunt for your Angel
to challenge you, to break you.

Your call is mean from solitude now.
No one contends you, o Jacob
from the seven lands of the unseen god.
No one to confirm or deny your youth's obstinacy
whose insolence put an oath upon a whole people.

What if your Challenger never comes?
What if you return home sound, but evil and silent?

Is that only the lame and the broken by god can lead a people
to another piece of a promised land,
across another abyss of soundless condemnation,
which, look, already buries your seed?

. . .

Are you also one of those
who can pray only broken,
and long only to be broken,
who seek the-One-who-Breaks
to feel just for an instant
d ivinity in their hips?

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IT BECOMES OBVIOUS

It becomes obvious
to the invisible eyes
that it is possible to leave:
the lids shut obediently
and release the embrace
which held the coast.

It becomes obvious to the invisible eyes
that it is possible to sail
with no-one's love,
with no memory or lantern,
even with no ship and sailors;
on top of the captain's hat,
but it sinks too
into the starless sea.

The waves splash
and their sound
is the only thing that travels.
It became obvious
to the invisible eyes
that everything departs
in this fog
in this hour which cannot be remembered,
where time has wrecked
onto the deserted horizon.

In this night
it is possible to live without courage.
Even hope is a burden
jetted from the deck.
Even the sails are set aflame,
with no one to recall them.

… The stories were untrue.
No land lies to the north.
Here, there is only long sailing
granted to the ones
who do not desire a harbor anymore,
who do not cease without land.
In this night
their faces become visible
and their death certain.

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From the cycle GENTLER POEMS

YOU TURN AWAY FROM THE WINDOW

You turn away from the window.
That is something I must stand.
Crows fly behind you,
yet you notice nothing.

You wait for your voice to come back,
but the silence blazes
and pain bursts between us.
You will die, you will die.
What about these blind palms
that burn out slowly, clandestine?

I dare not tell you
t hat I will die.
Eternity will split
and bewildered I will stand
torn apart by these two
who are laughing low now.

You turn away from the window.
To write down these words it takes time.
It was yesterday, long ago,
that I saw you for the last time
turning away from the window.
Ever since this room has been falling into darkness.
And I spell out that awful lie
that splinters the blood
and makes time falls on its knees.

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THE STARRY CENTAUR

Your loves trampled the heavenly meadows.
I heard about that horses' madness,
I knew that you kill.
Here I am, I lie with head in the mud,
with all my mirrors in the palm,
after one of your dreams that ran over me.

Someone blows in my nape.
Someone's mane entangles me in a net.
And again I drown voluntarily
in the tears hung on the blue hair.
Although I know that you are a lie,
a travelling work of the stars.

Dream, murderer.
Your eyes, the silent massive births,
guard before the frightful star-birds of the cold.

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PASSERS-BY

I know nothing of love,
of the love you seek in the world.
I've got nothing to do with it.

Still, an inner sense like milk,
something throbs inside,
a forgotten bow of denial and regret…

I know you from the days of the Sabbath;
the afternoon hours beneath the aggravating sky-
veiled smiles under pale brows.

I know your sleep.
I know the cane you use
to chase away dogs from the gate.
You grumble when you think there is no one there.

And still, you lean for an instant
on the handle of the cane
sensing something unseen in the evasive air,
something so sweet yet ruthlessly demanding.

You know then.
Our foreheads merge
and we are one dream
in so many worlds.

It is hard to say this, my love.

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CYCLE: THE GREY ANGEL
(Nea)

THE GREY ANGEL

1. You, who loved so strongly,
it was you I saw, white, under the mountain,
you gave me the yoking dreams,
you tore away the dawn from me.

How did it enchant me, this grey shape
spread timelessly as a frontier land?
on this mountain, this unlit domain,
this face inhumanly fair.

Take it up with a bridal embroidery,
with one thread white and firm,
this face that opens under a veil,
deep as the night, and night's finger.

Yes, by the astounded gaze the shape takes you over:
from the shoulders fall off grief and laugh,
as the icy wind scatters and buries
the cherry blossom on a golden field.

2. You, you were always there,
you snowy voice, star of the grass.
Did you finally awake that tender sinner,
that heavenly shadow on a gray road as a nest.

Stand erect under that barrenness
with broad palms and entangled dreams.
Let the salty rock take you,
breathless is the wild incurable land.

Look back from the dream, rest where you are not,
you have never been longer than silence.
A height awaits you, eternal and dormant,
a bridge awaits you, of wonderful pain.

And from the top whence you mirror into the water,
you see a green rock, limpid and soft.
There tinkle inside it, golden lights sail,
quiet worlds of unlike lives and flow.

You are that silken angel born out of rock,
with a slow armor of earthly bark.
An empty frame gapes at the brow like a pattern,
looking for its stone seal lost in the wild.

Then, the golden rock pounds like a hammer
the eternal forehead, takes away its voice.
And dreams ascend like a naked forest
the mild wings of the gray form.

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SALT AND DEATH

"Every separation is a link…"
- Simone Weil

1. Every separation as an immortal link,
a cave for ever spun around.
A spring of empty water
that cuts the eyes a-half.

Into the first death you walk
straight, bravely -
didn't you promise to be a hero?
Into the second death you walk
with eyes slashed, like a doll,
and blackness pours upon the world.
It is hard to die from the third death:
you tread a world
of no land or sun.
Your body a vulnerable eye
of infinite sight.

2. At night the beach changes into a starry sky.
Yet, I never go there.
I haven't paced in sea for a long time.
The salt and death speak about thirst.
There must be another sea within
if so loudly they obsess,
salt and death.

3. Salt reminds me of your body.
You knew everything, you, with seaweed in the hair.
You slowly rubbed salt into my skin,
while talking of the ancient
ascent of the ocean-bottoms.

There I grew, under the waters.
You made me a different body out of salt.
Now I pace upon the sands.
I avoid this melting water.
I cannot remember you.
I cannot remember.

… The spirit of the sapphire was your guide.

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GRASS

1. Oh come, arrive,
but do arrive slowly!
It is quiet, spring,
and the warmth is awake.

I merge with the grass.
With no tree, proud and powerful,
stern from awaiting blade or storm,
I haven't felt such a kindred expansion,
as with this silent, black, obedient grass.

Come slowly, approach but beyond sight
remain, on the verge of this vigilant mind.
Dive out of painful waiting, a naked rose,
before the dreams of this poor, ancient home.

Don't approach yet. Like a dawn
I sense you - deafening behind the mount.
Don't come, slowly. A moist stone awaits you,
in a sorrowed brook and a sun-song.

Like a hand of wind, rustling and warm,
I breathe with the grass above the moist soil.
As to a cave burnt by long deaths,
they return, the dreams, quiet and strong.

2. Don't speak, be silent.
Let the One arrive
who breathed in the grass
his mighty will.
Let the draughty strike
in the women's night
take hold of the hour
and the ants' rustle.

"Let there be grass!"
and a deaf falcon rushes
to carry the news
to the barefoot stars.
A dazzled wind
falls from the heaven
bringing grass, wet grass,
like beautiful locks.

"Let there be silence!"
and eternal noise
of growth and seething
and bodily wounds.
Let the pine sleep,
let the song roar,
to count and awake all
time buried and adored.

"Here it is - a body!"
and here the lightning bolt.
White waters open
that blaze and torment.
Let there be silence:
grass is being born.
Let the ember spring forth
above the ancient dancers.

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From DEOGAE

ANNUAL CYCLE OF WALKING

I breathe in slowly - a solemn power.
I breathe in slowly - an uprooted home.
The Forgotten Land tore apart my dreaming.
The most difficult koan is this one, the unuttered.

I stopped by chance, forefather Job,
and sat to watch the solitude:
salty instants pinned on seashells -
only the Sky can contain this heated foam.
I will knit you a robe of seaweed and sand.
You know. It is cold, forefather Job.

There are nights when I dream that I am pacing.
There are pacings when I think I am blood.
And so proud and vain and strong that naked,
I abandon the Night and depart.

And you, Love, that stab me
in the ribs of the clouds,
tell me, where does this Road lose you,
where do you stand to welcome the shines
that come to wake up
those who do not remember
and cannot forget.

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NARCISSUS's WASTELAND

Have I descended for this face?

Most bitterly I love alone and empty.
In abyss my shape wavers.
Tall as the night I stand
scaring the birds
with the anger that I do not die.

This house has a threshold of a bearing sky,
lightnings bloom through the cracks.
The World falls silent
captured in circle.
I fly in secret
through the sighs of the Abyss.

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EXCAVATION OF THE SEA

I bit the ground
where the Sea had walked.
I cried and stayed silent at It.
Insane like a storm, I dreamt of stillness.
My eyes thunder from gazing into Depth.

I bit the ground
where It had walked.

NEW HOME

You came to ravish my home.
To change my roof into rain.
I do not know how to reach
one room from another.

Wherever I turn,
there is no wall for a door.
Wherever I lie,
I am in the midpoint again.
So what if I run,
the earth, timid,
runs along beneath me.

I sail on my back, with palms for sails.
There is no-one I can be on the way to.

In this world - a wasteland,
the winds
the trees
the stones
the mountains

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