V
And I had to keep my arms spread out all the time
and equally hesitant to walk into
the full light or yet the most natural
darkness, for you never know when inner distance
will disappear from sight
and how blindness makes
a saint of its victim; hoarse
he, standing by the framed
face, with the same one motion
he spoke of destiny
and the moment his body
stretched to a cross, I imagined his veins
burning black deep inside.
And I sweated blood,
I froze, ‘’ghost’’ I burst out,
‘’ghost’’ I bawled
and as I came frenziedly towards him:
the wall, his secret passage;
footsteps and more footsteps mounted up,
taking the head.
[His beetled mouth,
which repeated blindness
and smiled a row of teeth,
now kept a metallic rhythm
and inscribed shapes-cum-birds
in the feverish sky: the scanty ceiling.]
VI
The woman
could be seen in the guests’ room and you think she shared
an arduous repentance, as she moved
her arms in a dream;
she turned the hands of the clock,
she threw red ropes in all four corners
and she covered my shoulders
with an overcoat, white fingers, hair;
(I always wondered
at that empty seat, in its shadow
two green heads)
– and she pointed up to the dilapidated lamp.
VII
And the neck protruded stony
and the breast protruded crimson;
yellow rain fell
to wash the blood
off my hand and a sick
place burnt with its spasms
and scars
as that autumn: waking up
on a square-patterned fabric
and next to the woman;
my fingers had aged abruptly
and fell deeply in her hair,
shaking and fumbling onto
a taut vein
and I was always thinking stone
and
how hard it is to resist desire;
because what it wants, it buys with the soul.
And suddenly the other body went missing.
And what I now strived to close in my eyes:
black nails and skin
and deep water in the furrows of my hands.
VIII
And her hand whitened
terribly on my face
(between the eye and that old broken
wrinkle: whatever stony she found on ths skin)
– and thus it hang and creaked
and whenever it made to push aside the hair from my brow
I remembered walls behind: the woman
sat quietly on her chair
counting crosses on her fingers, when
wood reddened on the door’s darkness;
she instantly shook the dust off her knees,
got up from memory, and started
dragging two sigmatized feet
deep root, root she insisted, confirming
exits as she exited.
IX
And the neck protruded stony and the breast
protruded crimson.
I quietened the flesh in mere grimaces;
I fixed my gaze on the icon:
larks black white feathers
fell all around and the sensual body
I regarded as a cloud; an all-powerful light
will crush me.
