Taiga

I hung up everything I had:
crepe-paper streamers like at camp,
my own skin, your present state.
I ration my breaks according to the schedule: potassium cyanide
or other derivatives, you know how it is.

I reply to your letters myself,
as the loneliness couldn’t be any more profound.
Taiga, the softness of words. Melting and tenderness, its power.

Meanwhile, all the time spent tending the stacked
layers. The still-fragrant wood,
carried up the stairs each day in a wicker basket, shrewdly purchased
out of season, I wanted to tell you:

I am terrified by the accuracy of epithets,
the permeability between madness and solid,
precisely carried-out work.

Anna

Anna is possibility. She sits astride a fox
and off they go smoothly through the forest. Together. Raspberries,
branches, moss. Steam condenses, humidity rises,
raw air, the air after dawn.
What approaches, what awaits you? Now, right now.
Something slips through, a ringing, a melting, do you hear it?
The time when the light is still fragile. Ankles,
dew among the blueberries. Anna is possibility. Now,
do you see? She puts her face close, inhales the smell of fur.
Nothing matters, nothing, nothing at all. Everything
is still to come in the breath, in the breath that takes your breath.
The creature comes, pats you and changes,
for your nights are not, are not concluded.

Twelve

I didn’t even breathe, eager, behind the doors.
They were twelve years old and they were just taking a shortcut
along the tracks. The boy was dead on the spot,
she bled to death on the way to the hospital. The girls from the village
whispered that you could still see her hair on the crossing.
Hair. Spreading gossip, a banal queue in front of the grocer’s,
I’ll go there to take back some expired milk. Remember:
never hold it by the corner you want to cut off.
Strange how no-one talked about their mum.
Did she give them a kiss in the morning, did she have time,
or would she have been late again? The summer timetable,
you know how it is. And that vile queue, the queue in front of the grocer’s.

Footprints

I was on patrol until dawn because the forest fire
had reached the neighbouring village,
over one hundred homes had burned down
while my women slept.

In the meantime you opened the window, had your breakfast
(I have certain bad habits concerning pronouns, forgive me),
the years flew past like an epidemic,
an eruption, everything you don’t want to have under control.

I take you into my mouth, I use your person,
lost, damned, which of us speaks
in new languages?

And here a snowy plain
and in it depressions.

Footprints.

Absence

What did I see? Golden dust,
it floated down through the classroom with a three-digit,
for sure, a three-digit number, while
spread out open on a lap, open on a lap,
a book from the study where the chocolate was melting
on the heater. A strip of light, softness, the flowing over
of seconds. Golden dust in the light, it streamed in
from the window, into possible interpretations.
Swirl them round and let them settle, catch them
on your forearm, hold out a vulnerable part.
But this time in full consciousness. My plan?
I won’t be in today, I will be absent.
Absence as evidence that I am here,
that I really am here.