Ashes for Breakfast (12 page)

     The orbit is more generous here,

It takes longer on chillier nights

     For the bleeding to be stanched,

And hunger to tamp the body, the black hole.

 

 

It's a long time since your finger was a crutch,

     A walkway into the air

For the singer of Thebes, the green grasshopper,

     The wild hordes of june bugs,

The hoplites on the edge of the field, the shield louse.

     The wings always bleached

On tired butterflies, papyrus streaked

     With hieroglyphs.

Dirt marked the route of the caterpillar colonies.

     Greeny hills, the thumb bloodied

From the body of the squashed mosquito.

     On the back of your hand, meanwhile,

One of the ant-sappers was digging in.

 

 

Nothing is lost, not while grass sprouts

     From every crack. The tree

Measures human life in little rings.

     Of an apartment block, in the event of fire,

Only a charred hole will remain,

     Or a kids' playground. A kite soars aloft

In the city's updraft of pollution,

     A paper boat in a puddle

Sets keel to breakers. How your heart leaps

     To hear the scolding blackbird

Defend her patch of lawn by the side of the road,

     And green everywhere. Your walk takes you

Over graves, knocked down to pathway.

 

 

But the real terror was the times table

     That enmeshed your dreams,

Day after day the whirring of boomerangs

     Around the innumerable things, the compulsion

To engagement and action, counting

     In your sleep, the algebraic crippling.

Ever since you, a little squiggle, mute over your exercise book,

     Locked figures up in little boxes,

You yourself have become this multiple whole,

     Divided into integral parts, the head

Havering between positive and negative,

     Skin and brow so infinitely pleated. Your days

Numbered, your life became an interval.

 

 

Shivering under masks of knowledge,

     Freaked out by the extraordinary,

Dreamless by day under cynical clocks,

     Timetables, scales, counseled by

Cheerful killers, in front of the monitor—

     It made you sarcastic. Gripped

In the gritted teeth is diminution,

     Malevolence in shortage,

In a scatty monologue the sweet songs

     Of the child, run away from home

And city, over the fields to villages

     Where your feet throb at night,

The backs of your eyes peopled by monsters.

 

 

Your nerves worn smooth as under wing cases,

     It takes just a screaking crane at noon

To make you jump, a whistle

     Round the corner, the hiss of a ring-pull.

In this latest confrontation of heaven and hell,

     Something bursts asunder, causes cracks to run

Through the old brain arch of the century.

     The ground rumbles. Sistine echoes

Resound from museum hours,

     Ticking across empty squares.

The same lime that narrows the arteries

     Drives the roads out into the countryside,

Parts the spirits in front of a skyscraper wall.

 

 

And always the waiting for transport

     From here to there, where arrival

Is a doorway in the rain, and a white airport

     Spells immediate departure: you exit

Through a 24-hour cinema, a perma-neon café,

     Past conveyor belts murmuring

With the plausible luggage of others.

     No one there to meet you,

You step, jet-lagged, into the open, reeling

     With the memory of claustrophobia,

An evacuee by taxi from the earthquake zone

     To your hotel, to the
salle des pas perdus,

Where a sudden updraft dispatches you to the nearest track.

 

 

The coldest room becomes a sauna

     To your straying. How steeply the steps

Lead down into the earth's interior, how choking

     The smell, how strict the separation

Of Ladies and Gentlemen … The wrong door,

     No sooner touched, leads you astray,

To forbidden zones, to walls scribbled

     With the witty obscenities of the other side.

Nothing so confining as gender.

     Locked into cubicles, all ears to the pump,

The Stygian flush, the bowels and bowls,

     Alone with disgust and desire,

The body pressed dreaming to the tiles.

 

 

Good to know that black preserves things,

     That it compels the eye, a last customs post,

More dependable than any blue.

     No splutter of color, no

Torment, just a simple exit

     Without sostenuto. Poor piano,

Distorting the notes in its varnish.

     Every cloth keeps more for itself.

The hot asphalt holds the footprints

     Of the summer's pedestrian. No,

It's a rare black that absorbs death,

     Licks up the puddles of blood, entombs

The light, last refuge of the nerves.

 

 

Did we know what makes the world go round?

     That love tends to isolate

Seemed clear enough. Everyone kept it for himself,

     His personal thorn, till the blood

Soaked through at the worst possible moment.

     It was rare for anyone to remain uninjured.

More commonly, the pain transferred itself

     To the other party. To be left

Was the worst evil, to be insentient in spring,

     Stand like an amputee under the busted

Ferris wheel … The way the wind carried us

     Into the treetops from which

We were later to fall with blissful cries.

 

 

Did most of it not pass you by without trace,

     Into silence? Hardly to be stopped,

The faraway cloud formation, the rainy day,

     The accident with the fatal consequence.

And every crisis began with you.

     It was you that caused the gridlock.

In the remarkable scene around you

     Feelings darken. A shock lights it again.

Time flows by, in conversations,

     Washing your hands, over supper.

Prayer wards off the worst atrocities,

     The idol shielded from the dangerous draft—

A face pops up, already aged.

 

 

Can you guess how overcrowded this space is

     With dust and voices, swirling

Through the depths of time. Was the dragonfly

     A splinter from the propellers

Of the Great War? Did the swarm of midges

     Not perform their ballet in a magnetic field?

In the windy corridors of the street,

     Still far off, a beady jackdaw

Marks you down. Out of the rustling of leaves

     Rises the ancient dispute

Of theological theses. Trembling,

     You miss the one pebble, the single

Blade of grass, earth's embrace, deadly as ever.

EINEM SCHIMPANSEN IM LONDONER ZOO

Waren es Augen wie diese, in denen das Fieber zuerst

Ausbrach, das große ›Oho‹, wortreich von Reue gefolgt?

Was für ein Sprung, was für ein Riesensatz aus dem Dickicht,

Von diesem Schimpansen zu Buster Keatons traurígem Blick

Über die Reling, dem Hut nach, unerreichbar im Wasser.

Und die Entfernung nimmt zu! Mit jedem neuen Unfall

Wird die Wirbelsäule ein wenig steifer, halten die Hände

Das Steuer fester inmitten der Trümmerhaufen aus Rädern

Und Blech, zerquetscht. Schon damals dasselbe Mißgeschick,

Derselbe hektische
slapstick.
Mit nacktem Arsch voran

Zurück in die kleinen Paradiese zu friedensstiftendem Sex.

O weh, diese Trauer, geboren zu sein und nicht als Tier,

Die böse Vergeblichkeit, hingenommen mit unbewegtem Gesicht.

TO A CHIMPANZEE IN THE LONDON ZOO

Was it in eyes like these that the fever first flickered,

The great Aha, followed by voluminous remorse?

What a giant step from the jungle, what a leap

From this chimpanzee to Buster Keaton's sad eyes

Over the railing, gazing after his hat in the water.

And the distance growing! With every fresh mishap

The spine stiffens a little more, the hands grip the wheel harder

In the smoking wreckage of rubber and steel.

Even then the same error-proneness,

The same hectic slapstick. And so, sidle back

To the little paradise for pacifying sex with the missus.

Oh, the sorrow to be born as not an animal,

The forlornness, accepted with expressionless features.

EINEM OKAPI IM MÜNCHNER ZOO

Daß eine Stahltür sich öffnet, und seinen letzten Käfig

Betritt ein Fabeltier, zitternd, weil es Zeit ist zum Füttern,

Weil der Pfleger nach Hause will und das Publikum lacht,

Steht in keiner der Einhorn-Legenden verzeichnet. Okapi, —

Ein Wort aus den Urwaldsprachen, die niemand mehr spricht.

Zu kurz für Savannen, hat dieser geduldige, rostbraune Hals

Die Strohballen verdient, den vergitterten Schlafstall.

Denn die gerodete Welt wird ihm fremd sein, so fremd

Wie dem zerstreuten Besucher ein kombiniertes Tier,

Halb Giraffe, halb Zebra, und von den kindlichen Schatten,

Den Bilderbuch-Silhouetten beider, gleich weit entfernt.

Noch so ein Wiederkäuer verlorener Zeiten, ein Posten

Am zoologischen Wegrand aufgestellt, wie zur Warnung

Vor der Exotik von Hinterbliebenen, einsam in ihrer Art.

TO AN OKAPI IN THE MUNICH ZOO

The clank of a steel door, and the ignominious entrance

Of the heraldic beast, trembling, because it's feeding time,

And the keeper wants to knock off, and the beastly onlookers are laughing …

These are things not writ in any unicorn legend. Okapi—

The word is from jungle languages, now themselves extinct.

Insufficiently tall for the savannah, this patient, rust-colored

Throat merits its pellets of straw, and its locked stall at night.

Because the free range world will be strange to him,

As strange as to the bemused visitor

This combination of giraffe and zebra,

Equally remote from the familiar child cutout of either.

One more ruminant from the olden days, a sentry

Planted on the zoological roadside, as though to warn

Against the pathos of the exotic throwback.

EINEM PINGUIN IM NEW YORKER AQUARIUM

Für gewöhnlich fängt es mit Kunststücken an. Eine Tierschau

Präsentiert die geordneten Reihen, Kokarden nach vorn:

Seehunde im Trio, Bälle jonglierend auf ihren Nasen, schlanke

Wendige Statuen, von Dompteuren synchron geschaltet

Wie am Broadway die Tänzer, in den Ghettos die Eckensteher,

Schlaksig verrenkt vor den Feuerleitern. Dann erst kam er,

Dieser junge Pinguin mit dem Namen des deutschen Gelehrten,

Der einfach nur dastand, nichts konnte, nichts wollte, der Held

Früher Vaudevilles, flackernder Filmkomödien, schwarzweiß

Gezeichnet, den Stufen preisgegeben, der windschiefen Welt.

Heimlicher Favorit einer Minderheit kindlicher Wähler,

War er im Frack der Hotelportier, am Beckenrand schwankend,

Fröstelnd auf Schwimmflossen, die Flügel zuckend. Wie elend,

Vollendet sein Nichtstun, bis in den Abgang, ganz ohne Knicks.

TO A PENGUIN IN THE NEW YORK AQUARIUM

It generally begins with tricks. An animal show

With the serried ranks, eyes and medals front:

A trio of seals, juggling balls on their noses, slim

Flexi-statues, synchronized by their trainers

Like Broadway chorines, or men mooching on street corners,

Lissomely draped around fire escapes. And then he came,

This young penguin with the name of a German philosopher,

Who just stood there, didn't do anything, couldn't do anything,

A hero of early vaudeville, of flickering black-and-white

Comedies, imperiled by flights of steps, by a windy world.

Secret favorite of a minority of the childish electorate,

He was the butler in tails, teetering on the brink of the pool,

Shivering on his flippers, swishing his wings. His performance

Faultlessly abject, down to the exit, sloping off, without a bow.

FROM

NACH DEN SATIREN

(1999)

IN DER PROVINZ I

(
NORMANDIE
)

Eingefallen am Bahndamm,

Liegt ein Hundekadaver quer im Gebiß

Kreideweiß numerierter Schwellen, erstarrt.

Je länger du hinsiehst, je mehr

Zieht sein Fell in den Staub ein, den Schotter

Zwischen den Inseln aus frischem Gras.

Dann ist auch dieses Leben, ein Fleck,

Gründlich getilgt.

IN THE PROVINCES I

(NORMANDY)

The body of a dead dog lies

Slumped on a railway embankment, chewed up