you my Gentle One, you my Open One, and –you received us.Whosays that for us everything died,that for us there the Eye broke?Everything woke, all things began.Vast, a Sun came swimming by, brighta Soul and a Soul engaged, clear,masterfully made a silence for ita path ahead.Lightlyyou opened your Lap, quietrose a Breath in the Aether,and…
gold, out of which She comes,a shade, to me, in the middleof fracturing hours,yourbeing-dead’s daughter.Slender in shape,a thin, almond-eyed shadow,her mouth and her sexdanced round by creatures from sleep,out of the cave of the gold,she rises up,to the summit of Now.With night-dark-shroudedlips,I speak the Prayer:In the name of the Threewho fight with each other, untilheaven…
Vinegrowers dig up digunder the darkhoured watch,depth for depth,you read,the invisibleone commands the windto stay in bounds,you read,the Open Ones carrythe stone behind the eye,it recognizes you,on a Sabbath.TRANSLATED BY PIERRE JORIS
and all that’s turned to frostwith us, burns there and sees.It sees, for it has Eyes,Earths they are, and bright.Night, Night, Alkalis.It sees, this Child of Sight.It sees, it sees, we see,I see you, you too see.Ice will rise again beforeThis Hour shall cease to be.
Your eye, as blind as the stone.We werehands,we baled the darkness empty, we foundthe word that ascended summer:flower.Flower – a blind man’s word.Your eye and mine:they seeto water.Growth.Heart wall upon heart walladds petals to it.One more word like this word, and the hammerswill swing over open ground.
The Wandering-Sickles in extra-heavenly Placemime themselves grey-whiteMoon-Swallows, together,Star-Swifts,I plunge thereand pour an Urnfuldown onto you,in you.
with blue-black Syllables, in Snow-Eyelash-Shadow,the Crane through Thought-showers,comes gliding, steely-you open for him.His beak ticks the Hour for youat every Mouth – at everybell-stroke, with red-hot Rope, a Silent-Millennium,Un-Pulse and Pulsemint each other to death,the Dollars, the Cents,rain hard through your Pores,inSecond-Shapesyou fly there and barthe Doors Yesterday and Tomorrow – phosphorescent,Forever-Teeth,buds the one, and…
not in the eye for the tear.seven nights higher red makes for red,seven hearts deeper the hand knocks on the gate,seven roses later plashes the fountain.
a sharpClamp,you bite through my Shirt into the Skin,a Cloth,you slither over my Mouth,in the midst of my,to you, Shadow, burdensome,Speech.
there I heard you, Finite, singing,there I saw you, Mandelstam.The Sky hung over the Roadstead,the Gull, hung over the Crane.The Finite sang there, the Constant –you, the Gunboat, Baobab.I hailed the Tricolorwith a Russian Word –the Lost was Un-Lost,the Heart Anchored there.
