Wandering in the wasteland
I saw the snakes smile
their dusty skins
in convulsions
of laughter.
(M.L., “Legend”)
1/
the weak reproach
of someone’s membranes
painted yellow
dust kicked up
by snakes
whose pale eyes
match your own
what schemes
we live with
face to face
the mould
of years
the blood
of tyrants
& the fire
cleansing them
of doubts
Pan plays for them
brutes that the sun
rains down on
that the time allows
they slide
& slither
from the bottom up
2 /
snake
skins
that the dust
entombs
the wasteland
covers
legends
grow apace
convulsions
rise
& laughter
matters
3/
atop a mountain
stones
are hammered down
stone after stone
the sun
ignites the air
a carnival
atop a mountain
in a show
with wagging
tongues
stones touching stones
& casting shadows
stones in heaps
the luck of brothers
binding brothers
fire in the sky
a heap of stones
& how a hammer
raised aloft
can signal
joy
4/
are sorrows
carmine colored
like a kiss
squeezed tight
with tongs
a kiss or something
hot inside
our mouths
a ritual of blood
driving all creatures
mad –
even you
5/
her breast
comes open
spilling dust
& rust
around her
skinny virgin
whom a genie
fills with love
the gods
with hate –
their salutations
stiffen her
leaving her prey
to what they aim at her
down to the basest
offal
6/
delight
in blueness
or in scum
that flows
from hollows
there is magic
in the place
where blades glint
hopes still live
deep in the vortex
the long stretches
air so thick within
it loses
any rhythm
in the season’s calm
a yellowness
of air
we cut through
with a pair
of hatchets
somnambulism
guides us
lethargy returns
a zephyr floating
overhead
something to envy
skulls that time
has left behind
chameleons with diamonds
on their bellies
yiddish symphonies
up from the depths
its waters
bursting
from a stone
they practice
immobility
grass covers earth
like scales
or wings
one thought
a thousand
movements
forced vibrations
in the sea
a hatchet
clatters down
dispersing points
of dust
& sand
a plane
above us
diving
down
& out
7/
a hatchet like a dream in yiddish strikes them flanks & bellies tremble timber swells
a cryptic compromise sucks up the fragrance from the floor before a fire cracks the
silence springing up along the path the little nothings seen are both a promise & a violation
like a dream in yiddish stones drop down & houses bring forth fountains
sight forsakes your eyes & over on your left rugs cover windowpanes with
eyelids shut somebody twice a nobody cries slander creativity an archipelago with
houses set aflame a measure of how matter drags us down of how our hands hide
glass utensils how on your right the windows of an attic form a mouth a stone
frame near the house’s peak
how like a dream in yiddish I am near you how a scarecrow’s heart starts
swelling in an eerie earthlight seen from far away we sit on facing chairs the walls
are like a morgue’s a damp anarchic void surrounds us steel & stone a mountain
house a buddhist forest shadows of our feet beneath an oaken table from our ears
bejeweled rings are dangling pipes connect us to our roots a yiddish cry for
judgment where a creature lurks & nobody replies
18.i.14
8/
eyes in his head like crystal scorpions god’s crooked loins vibrating until it shakes the street makes bridges fall & scatter like a line of snakes responding to the way his breath blows & the streets grow foggy parapets shoot through the air & drop straightdown in the abyss through which we make our way by impulse drifting past the intersection of two streets at left & right an airborne chase a trip that takes us to the middle of a further street a snake at one side testing our courage shaken by its fateful noise refracted through bright prisms sparks of energy a dance that cracks our ribs the rhythms of a world reduced to chaos yesterday erased with scarce a care
20.i.14
[Author's note: Written in the process of reading Mikhl Likht’s Protsesiyes / Processions along with the translation from Yiddish by Ariel Resnikoff & Stephen Ross, while following the procedures set earlier in my Lorca Variations. A tribute both to Likht & to his language.]