***
I don’t recall without a doubt,
Perhaps a woman’s words: don’t cry.
That’s all. Candles snuffed out.
Arnas, you can open your eyes.
But I’m running with my eyes closed.
I’m late, and can’t remember to where.
And the snow – the snow falls composed
In A minor shifting to C major with flair.
Every night, every day, and every night
I listen while wandering without aim,
But wake to find myself again in sight
Of everything that still remains the same.
Speech Therapy
The Ancient Greeks considered the flute
to be the instrument closest to the human voice
Andrei Tarkovsky, “I can speak,” The Mirror
The Greeks were wrong
Whatever else, I never heard a flute –
No matter how I listened
Pressed against the door, holding my breath
I heard everything except for the flute
There were
Drums trumpets shouts and moans
When the doctor tried to return
The gift of speech to the soldier
He immediately diagnosed the problems to be
Not in the throat, but deeper inside
He needed to be calmed down
But not with ether or chloroform
The doctor showed him colorful pictures –
Landscapes, vast sunny spaces –
Tell me what you see
And the patient would stutter with each syllable
As if swallowing handfuls of crackling embers
War
The next picture – a photograph:
Three children with backpacks and striped sailor shirts
Answer: war
A woman
With white leggings
A hat
And a ribbon-tied bouquet of hepaticas in her hands
War
War and flutes playing
For enemy regiments on the march
Morning
I don’t have anything else to offer
After last night
Only a shirt
My soul
My cotton plaid life
With a stain
Don’t be afraid
It’s not blood
And even if it is blood
It’s not someone else’s
It spilled out when
My heart broke
Returning
To its state of being in two
What’s called “For ever after”
So don’t be afraid
Get dressed
Sinking
– a musical phrase
This film is the shit of shits
Full of blubbering and tears
In the worst melodramatic tradition
It’s disgusting to see how everyone awaits
Each word with bated breath
Not me
It’s making me sick
Until I hear one phrase
And something starts happening to me
I remember all the harms caused
By the worst people
Those who did the most evil
Physically and emotionally
And I remember the people who did the most good
Physically and emotionally
Then I think to myself
And when no one is listening I say it out loud
Thank God
I will have someone to say it to
Now and at the hour of our death
A phrase
Saved from a sinking ship
Gentlemen, it’s been a privilege
playing with you tonight.
The Voice Beyond the Frame
See, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands;
your walls are ever before me.
Isaiah 49.16
Without it then nothing
I know that to see means to know
That a person discovers most of the world through the eyes
And yet – that voice –
From beyond the frame as if from the sky as if from oneself –
If I didn’t hear, if all I had were sight, I would be blind
I wouldn’t know why that man is going down the road by the forest
And then along the fence
Whether he left his home and is returning
Or is getting even further away and won’t return
I wouldn’t know
If I had already apologized to my mother
Without waiting for her apology
Or if I had already apologized to the woman who really was for me…
I wouldn’t know
Why those people dressed in black are dancing there in front
Dressed in black but dancing
It’s good that the voice can explain
Though it’s scary when it starts to sing
It howls like a crazy drunken geezer in its sleep
Or maybe it’s me choking on the pearly white saliva of my loneliness
Spitting out the green foam of my solitude
Only he
Only he can tell us
Where his children are
Whether they are happy or even alive
Or happily alive
He’s the only one who knows why
A child being lifted into a trolleybus
Drops a tangerine
Which rolls into a puddle
And shines therein really shining
So that you could even go blind in your sleep
Why does it roll why does it shine
He knows
This and all the other great secrets
And while I hear him I have more courage
Hearing gives me more courage to live
Hearing him call you with your one true name
Sometimes the voice doubles and I don’t know anymore
I say to you who art in heaven
Is it you who art in heaven which is in me in whom heaven can only be
Who doesn’t fit into whom
Like the spirit in the bottle
I don’t know
Who is outside the frame for whom
