Daily Threshold
toss behind you the doings you’ve spawned, clear
the stable, get out. you thrashed oxhide
to sawdust, snapped your axe on the ice,
burnt clown the stump in its strength -
you’re short of heat: you’ll smelt no increase.
and what If the chaff fermented? If stifling air
brought growth on heat?
you’d just have traded warts for scabs.
on your eyelids the bread and beer are festering
saccharine, go.
the cock breaks his throat on a cry,
the ox falls on his horn, the sow
flays her pigskin: seasickness grows
about the borrowed house, and yanks it
from its base. the iron will soon be through
and your sweat frozen-out of mending it.
go. in the end
you are not hand enough.
look where your teeth fall:
there’s a trap will do for you . . . . well, stay if you like.
Translated by Jeremy Adler
Page(s) 70
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