Esther Kinsky
Untitled
*
A shadow, still
as stone, as ashes
still as the air
trembling above traces
whetted by a stranger’s heart
day and nightHow terrible is death:
a life
becomes everyman’s
furtive property*
So many voices
grind my nights
to stone
with names and utterance and call
to stone
for a stuttering tongue
that rises and falls with ease
in the darkness
for a slingshot
into the quiet fracture of the day
*A dark knot
heart, taut
around a wound
unstaunched
time
the pale striving
for things, names, silence
of oblivion
a mouth
that makes all sound die down
and drinks the darkness
and never speaks of light*
Silence, a place
place between throat and heart
where a sound
rises, breaks and dies
where we bed down
the dead under the white
pebbles of the fraenulum
and of foreign parts
where we draw
the names or let them be
abandon them
to the unsaid,
soundless signs
without a world
Translated by Martin Chalmers
Page(s) 187-188
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