A Poem

Tell me, if I caught you one day

and kissed the sole of your foot,
wouldn't you limp a little then,
afraid to crush my kiss? ...
Music
The music was bringing me close to things.
She set an arch between me and them
and I could fall from far, from spheres
without breaking a limb,
wasting not one drop of power.
Like a magnet the music picked from me
the coppery feeling, the feeling of violet.
It lifted them up, like blades
of sprouting grass.
nd watching he could see
a coppery !eld, a !eld of violet
above which slowly unfolds
the nocturnal chain of pale-blue stars,
under which,
temple to temple
rib to rib,
our lives embraced.
Autumn Emotion
utumn is here, cover my heart somehow
with a tree shadow, better still with your shadow.
I am afraid sometimes I shall no longer see you,
I shall grow wings sharp "pointed towards the clouds,
you willl hide in a stranger#s eye,
he shroud himself in a wormwood leaf.
Then I come closer to stones and am silent,
I take my words and drown them in the sea.
I whistle the moon, and make it rise
into an enormous love.
Poem
Sometimes I talk in front of you,
as in front of a hight stone wall
la$ily disappearing into cloud.
I shout the names of all
things I ever knew. I tear
seconds aways from the hour
and show them, beating,
while under pleasant guise of silence
I confess the destiny of plants.
The high stone wall
opens a great, blue eye
then shuts it.
Song
%verything should have been spheres
but it was not, was not so.
%verything should have been lines
but it was not, was not so.
&ou should have been a thin circle
but you were not, were not so.
I should have been a thin rhombus
but I was not, was not so.
'rass, stones, birds
you are wholly, wholly another.
I look at me, I hear me, smell me
and I think I am dreaming.
%verything should have been spheres
but it was not, was not so.
%verything should have been lines
but it was not, was not so.
Fifth elegy
The temptation of the real
I have never angry with apples
for being apples, with leaves for being leaves,
with shadows for being shadows, birds for being birds.
(ut apples, leaves, shadows, birds
grew suddenly angry with me.
)ere I am, brought before the court of the leaves,
the court of shadows, apples, birds,
round courts, aerial courts,
subtle, refreshing courts. )ere I am
condemned for lack of knowledge,
for boredom, for an*iety,
for immobility. Sentences written
in the language of kernels+ indictments
sealed with the entrails of birds,
cool grey penances pronounced against me.
I stand up, head uncovered,
trying to decipher what I deserve
for ignorance,
for I cannot, cannot decipher
anything , and this state of mind
itself grows angry with me,
and condemns me indecipherably
to a perpetual waiting,
to a straining within themselves of meanings
until they take the form of apples,
of leaves, of shadows,
of birds.
Savonarola
Savonarola appeared to me and said-
Let#s burn the trees at the stake of vanities.
Let#s burn grass, the wheat, the corn
so that everything will be much simpler.
Let#s break the stones, tear rivers
out of their beds, so that everything
will be much simpler " far, far simpler.
Let#s give up our legs
since walking#s a vanity.
Let#s give up our sight
since the eye is a vanity.
Let#s give up our hearing, since the ear
is a vanity.
Let#s give up our hands
so that everything will be much simpler " far,
far simpler.
Savonarola appeared to me in a dream
like an old wound in the brain of humanity.
)e appeared to me in a dream
and I woke shouting and screaming.
Sad love-song
/nly my life will truly die for me
sometime.
/nly the grass knows the earth# s taste.
0hen he leaves her, only my blood
truly pines for my heart.
The air is tall, you are tall,
my sadness too is tall,
a time is coming when horses die
a time is coming when machinery grows old
a time is coming when it rains coldly
and all the women wear your face, your dresses.
nd a great white bird is coming
and lays the moon on the sky.