Untitled
GENTLEMEN,
you with the furtive belly,
you with the teeth of laughter,
you with the barbed wire hands,
you with the foot of contempt,
you with the cowering eye,
you with the gallows in your heart,
you in your triumphal robe of skin,
your brother’s purple skin:
the flags on your forehead prattle
salvoes into the suppliant wind,
bursts of fire batter
the lung to ashes.
your blindness battens
other eyes with darkness
and the sockets, hastily
forgotten, raise
dust for a tongue
for an arm to your
sleep and gape.
DID YOU DREAM all your yesterdays?
did you sleep right past today?
and the mattresses are all flesh,
they decay at the wrong time
and the skirts of love wither
in your hand.
YOU
stop up your ears
with times to come, block up
your nose when the smell
of the day returns:
in your hasty back
the wall you lived up to this day,
and the mirror blacked out.
the road in front
is walled up with year upon year
the road in front breaks
the bread underground
your hand has slapped
Its shadow on the way
and ordered unscrupulous fear
to guard your peace.
reflections undermine the chrome
peels off in the mirror,
the rust shows through
the rust burns off
the rust burns
Translated by Jeremy Adler
Page(s) 68-69
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