|
With the patience of freezing alongside the living,
the face composed and long since worn out
for ever
and a sheaf of severed threads
sometimes in the left, sometimes in the right hand
I carry out my unpaid and unsolicited work.
That I can live on it
Is both a privilege and law of coincidence.
My work-places are at once in the air and on the ground
on and under surfaces railway tracks motorways
in cities and everywhere.
I neither can nor will leave off work
except in the state of deep sleep
when I am innocent.
There is neither provision for holidays nor pension plan
no Christmas bonus nor the possibility of reporting sick
not to mention safety precautions at the work-place.
I am an unskilled female worker. I have to be
for otherwise I could not pursue this completely unstructured
unorthodox occupation at all.
Because I dwell everywhere at the same time I often do not know
whether I am on my head or on my heels
nor what should be my starting-point.
While working I do not talk
or only the bare minimum
and then against my will,
Although when the situation demands it
I can also talk a lot.
Then whole cascades of words come rushing out
masses of words thrust their way out of me
without my knowing exactly where they come from
where in me they originate and what they actually signify.
They have always been alien and obscure to me
and their emergence and outward form
are embarrassing and unpleasant.
Like a fit
- foaming at the mouth with syllables -
I try to handle such speech
something beyond my control
for which I refuse to be called to account
an emergency which has to be taken in one’s stride with the least possible
fuss.
My work is then occasionally neglected
perhaps even remains undone
which is why it may take offence
although often I carry on furtively, on the sly
even while I am speaking.
But after such distractions
when I can devote myself to it again undisturbed
and no-one else addresses me
It often lies before me pleading in quiet expectation.
Then I dream of a time
of never having to open my mouth again
for discharges, rashes or floods of words.
It is quietest where
I pursue my favourite occupation
where a restrained whir of voices prevails
and you can’t talk of language
because potential words vanish as they are generated
or have burrowed back into their tunnels and holes
and stare into the dark until the images come
independent entities, traumas
which are everywhere and always have been,
wanting to be seen smelt and breathed by me
even Integrated into my body.
Past life fretted away, pulverised blood
in fissured, dried-out river-beds
primeval worms and slimy creatures intertwined
in wet lands
fine-grained sand and dust
on the shores of the seas of liquefied pain
which must be drained down to bedrock.
Eyeless bodies still pulsating, waiting
to be able at last to render up their hearts
and then to be dissolved and washed away.
Sometimes in the night I feel the hum of voices next my skin.
Hundreds of eyelids or feather-light lips
seem to have approached me in sleep
and seem to keep flicking against the surface of my body.
They brush my skin like butterfly wings
causing a gentle itch.
On the rubbish dumps there’s a seething unrest.
If only I weren’t always so alone
here, at work.
But nobody should come too near me either
or try to invade me.
For long enough they have tried by means of this technology
to riddle and consume me
they have beaten my eardrums
with the mighty din of proximity
thrust their facts down my throat
and spat their non-stop obscenities in my teeth
and smeared them on my skin
while I lay writhing but invisible
in the deck chair
a few inches above freshly raked earth
which for order’s sake you must not tread
- in North West Germany -
while my face was turned so far inwards
that in spite of the harsh spring light
I no longer needed to close my delicate eyes.
I was black with knowing.
Without them
without their quiet endurance
without words I’d never have come through
would have succumbed to the here and now.
Without the stimulus of their silence
I would never have reached this outpost
where I
despite the ultimate melting of the subcutaneous tissues
and blood-vessels bursting body-wide
want to linger a spell and work the while.
Where criminal gestures and facts
occur only as a sum total
which I can leave to the accountants for their balance-sheets.
Without their mute presence on the horizon
I would have succumbed too soon to the overwhelming evidence
and the knowledge that had reached my body incredibly compressed
would not only have cut me off from the feminine lifelines
but would have entrenched me in the greatest imaginable horror.
What it has on its conscience is only my two children
to whom I was unable in the welter of appointments
and the tumult of feelings
even to say a due farewell
before the amiable butchering doctors
pulled them out of me mechanically
and also because right from the beginning
they had been Impaled even as seedlings
so that no human link could ever develop.
Knowing or living
had been unmistakably conveyed to me every day.
And I rushed, ever more unrecognisable
through the mass of data and the inexorable daily round
served butchers’ shops and the sewers of the living
on the one hand
and fed my lonely knowing
inevitably on each of my paths
on the other.
Secretly, stealthily I procured - at least sometimes
- more and more often -
respite from a distance, from the overcast horizons
which thus, in spite of all their reticence, grew
closer and closer.
Knowing like a blackening shadow had stood
over every inner and outer burgeoning
every shoot and offspring of my body terrain
every attempt at blossoming nipped in the bud.
Daily it had asserted itself within me:
Either me or your bodily circuit.
A murderer.
Every day it stabbed me, bit by bit
in Berlin for example
thus sharpening my eye for the undead places
in the city landscapes
at the foot of the concrete walls
where sand, dogs’ excrement and menstrual blood merge
and where some die in communal allotments
at the edge of stagnant duckponds
covered with a layer of dust
on bare slippery ground under snowberry bushes.
With the stuck pig’s shrieks
turned totally inwards
conscious only of one’s own dwindling
which resists the downward movement by the minute
with a compressed charge of sounds
with screams compounded of thousands of screams
several for each nerve, and for each body cell
which try in vain to escape
at first one by one
then en masse in a still living motion
hoarse sore and blind
through hundreds of barricaded and blocked escape routes.
I’ve pulled it off one more time
through ice-chambers and white-hot passages
and right through the accursed labyrinth of screams.
With nothing else before me or behind me
except the glades and trails of devastation
which go on being blazed and cut - relentless
by men who go on being loved regardless
part-time killers, lay and professional criminals
who expect their petty pleasures
even in old age
and can find them
in the mere struggle to carry on
amidst the unequal division in life’s mechanics.
Now I can forget the facts
for they certainly don’t forget me.
Screened by coarse-meshed nets
and sheltered by warped fences and crumbling walls
I can stay fairly securely on the ground
and let the attacks wash over me.
There are some things still to be settled
I have still to cross out a few lines
or leave them to their own devices
so that they
like everything I do not handle myself
peter out.
Those who come very close to me
still try of course in their blind rage to kill me.
But as I do not need
to maintain myself
nor anyone else through me
it is not so bad under cover of night.
In extremis I still have
the airlines
to which I can brace myself to soar in a final effort.
The only thing I cannot quite evade
are the assertions of other people’s happiness.
They waylay me in unexpected places
maliciously on the slightest pretext
to discharge their refuse over me.
They claim to be my own endeavours.
Like a drug they befog me
and repeatedly cast an enslaving spell over me
leaving me paralysed and inert
at the edge of a pit
into which
if it depended on them
I must vanish for ever.
Hours later they still wield a backwash effect
dissipating my meagre energy
into backward surging furrows
never to be retrieved.
I cling to male tears
after all that
and while life moves on
to a few men’s readiness to surrender
of course such are now rare enough
to be counted on the fingers of one hand
to their signs of disintegration
bouts of flooding emergency signals
to the liquefied hieroglyphics of their inner security.
But even that
I may well soon no longer need.
Only FILIP MULLER
the quiet steady tenor of his report
from the dead to the living
the undying moments of his words
between two or more languages
the unremitting dark of the intent amazement
behind his wide-open eyes
which even my deep sleep no longer closes.
And then
after the long report suspended in time
gropingly meticulous
of the sudden passing and annihilation
that unique moment
at first imperceptibly shifting
the cessation propelled into motion of seconds’ duration
causing the eyes and the folds of the face
to move towards each other
in which gaze and mouth opened for speech
approach a meeting-place
where all knowing
begins to soften, to lose its grit
although at first it looks
as if the reporter would pause briefly
Interrupt his flow, have to break off.
But then it liquefies
the knowing
begins to flow Inwards and outwards at once
and overwhelms
floods
the words between here and a moment ago
so that they too weaken
want to go under
retreat
sink below the floods
embed themselves once more in silence
and yield at last to the unspeakable
with a catch in the throat, an attempt at a sob
and the helpless cry STOP.
WHY SHOULD ONE LIVE, FOR WHAT? AND THEN I WENT INTO THE
GAS-CHAMBER
WITH THEM, RESOLUTE TO DIE WITH THEM.
And how then the dogs bark at evening in the twilight
by a swift-flowing river.
At night, when in truth nothing else remains
my work even becomes a chamber of horrors
in which the scrap of scope to move
and oxygen reserves
seem not to fill the bill.
Then I no longer trust a single word
in the narrowness of the six bare walls
for truly all’s lost, naught’s won
and the threads of words
like watery spittle
from half-open unperceiving mouths
lay themselves limply on the pillow.
But when the dawn chorus strikes up
something relents and is calmer.
The world begins once more to throw up waves
the expanding air surges in
and creates some elbow room
a periphery.
in the garden behind
the last three marguerites
in bloom for weeks
emerge from the half-light
so that confidence comes dropping slow
to steer myself horizonwards once more
and here and there and in between
to have the power to work.
Broken down and sick with distance
right from birth
I am just the person for the work in hand.
The unbridgeable but travelled expanses
the strains dismemberments and sheddings of skin
which were endured afresh every day and every night
and in full consciousness
coupled with the constant squeezings and constrictions
were and are a training and a fitness test.
Without the simultaneous
tests for hardness, tensile stress and wear and tear
I would not have been equal to this task.
Words need that.
Only on this condition do they allow intimacy
allow themselves to be dug out and unloosed
torn away from forlornness
and be lifted out of soundlessness
out of constricting ducts and underminings.
They need the perfect pitch of pain
the feeling in the bones
and the alertness of the gut reaction.
They also need of course my blood serum
and my tears
to be able to soften.
They need my living body with all its excrescences.
My illnesses my lapses
contribute to their recovery
and perhaps occasion their day-dreams:
to reach somewhere else at last
not always the same old waste land.
They can hold on to my vocal cords
when they want to scream
and can count on my discretion
when sounds forsake them
or they do not yet want to be heard.
For togetherness is at an end
the dead are close to me not the living
and here comes at last the parting of the ways
albeit not at one fell swoop:
at the edges of wounds and where the knife has entered.
Flowerless plants grow towards me
ever so still
and at times it is quite uncanny
because I am so alone
and because never again
under the glare of torture
will intimacy be possible.
But it is too soon yet
for ultimate conclusions
and my existence is as yet unfinished.
Also because of words.
I creep up to their presence
now in the pale light of spring.
Like them I am at rock bottom.
A verbal existence.
Whether perceived by the living or not.
Twilight state hybrid creature dream figure
which from time immemorial
has survived
in its peculiar drugged condition after serious illness.
It even dreams of itself
thus ensuring its continuity
or is in a coma
equally remote from everything.
I must develop an ear for what It hears
an eye for what it sees
and letters, syllables, words for
what it says inaudibly
murmurs mumbles keeps to itself
sings or shouts or bellows
breathes forth or sighs.
It touches us both
it stirs itself and me
wild and lawless
it keeps earth and abyss moving and pulsating
prevents sediment and entrenchment.
The step the glance the bite into the sand
away from modes and images of life
which simply never would let go
and tried to pinion, choke you till you drop.
From every seed the grass that grew was black
but bright, luxuriant.
Vomit
disgorgement written in waves of sand
oozy flotsam and jetsam
or remains and fragments of the living
hardening as they emerge
with open mouth and eyes tight closed
or opening lids and closing mouths together
veins filling or draining
in a corporate swelling and contracting.
And the flesh
is it put on and taken off
growing or wasting around the bones
is the skin shed from the remains
do the worms throw it up
or does it graft itself together
a skeleton mask healed without scars.
Twilight figure decomposing agent
leaning on a weathered gravestone
the inscription partly faded
a creature of uncertain sex
between the generations
frail
devoid of hair and wrinkles
naked and supple
perhaps a mere heaving of the ground, a dune, a heap of sand.
Neither old nor young
half above and half below the earth
buried and risen
animate and inanimate
plant, wrapped in the sheath of a human body
in human skin
a product of the desert soil
which it has pierced, broken through
forced up end fed from hidden springs
ground water of fountains.
Fleeting oasis or mirage
amid the killing fields
the camps and regulations.
The arm slightly raised or drooping
clutched over the heart
the fingers of the narrow hand slightly crooked
fluttering like palm fronds
in the airstream between mouth orifice and ground
ongoing first or last sign
extension and underscoring of voiceless utterance
breathed forth
or of sounds already arrested at the vocal cords.
Hand freed from gripping and grasping
hovering and weightless
guiding the dumb syllables, words, phrases into space
leading them to the mid-point between heaven and earth
on to the airstreams.
Gesture and word separated
but only by that same air
as has breathed and produced both
and which even sandstorms cannot harm
since mouth and throat only silt up fleetingly
and gestures remain audible
and words visible
in the pauses
between the layers.
| 
