Years drift sluggishly through the air,

The cold ash of a deserted fire.Who needs the future?A ten-year-old girlcombs her mother’s hair,where crows of rivalriesare quietly nesting.The home will neverbe hers.In a corner of her minda living green mangodrops softly to earth.

die sich zu helfen nicht erheben kann.In Frauenaugenwinkeln brichtder Regenbogen sich im Sonnenlicht.Allein verdrehte Reishalmhälseentblößt auf karger, aufgewühlter Erde,allein kraftlos gesenkte Blicke,allein die angespannten Muskelnin Bhagyabatis Hals, den ihr die kastenlose Mutteram liebsten eigenhändig umdrehen wollte,allein das Klagen welker Frauenknallt an den blutigen Altar der Menschheit,allein der Augenblick der Furcht,da sie nach einem leidlich gütigen…

The streetlamps hang like decapitated headsBlood opens that terrible door between usThe wide mouth of the country is clamped in painwhile its body writhes on its bed of nailsThis little girl has just her raped bodyfor me to reach herThe weight of my guilt is unableto overcome my resistance to hug her

upon its grey cloud, breaking away into lightbefore it reaches its objective.The rain I have known and traded all this lifeis thrown like kelp on the beach.Like some shape of conscience I cannot look at,a malignant purpose is a nun’s eye.Who was the last man on earth,to whom the cold cloud brought the blood to…

only a weariness remains.I am that stranger nowmy mirror holds to me;the moment’s silencehardly moves across the glass.I pity myself in another’s guise.And no one’s back here, no oneI can recognize, and from my sideI see nothing. Years have passedsince I sat with you, watchingthe sky grow lonelier with cloudlessness,waiting for your body to make…

sunsets are fiery redand the waters of wells are clear already-there we are, under the mango tree,in the old house, amid the drift of things,the vase on the bookcasewith shadows of swifts reeling round it,and we don’t know whether we are alone any more.But each daywe watch the swifts come and go,watch the still-slender, teasing…

Face upon face returns to the barbed horizonsof the foggy temple; here liesa crumpled leaf, a filthy scarlet flowerout of placeless pasts, on the motionless stairs.Old brassy bellsmoulded by memories, dark, unfulfilled,to make the year come back againa recurring prayer.The stairs seem endless,lifelong,and those peaks too, Annapurna, Dhaulagiri;uncertain, impressive as gods.I dare not gointo the…

sunsets are fiery redand the waters of wells are clear already-there we are, under the mango tree,in the old house, amid the drift of things,the vase on the bookcasewith shadows of swifts reeling round it,and we don’t know whether we are alone any more.But each daywe watch the swifts come and go,watch the still-slender, teasing…

The cold ash of a deserted fire.Who needs the future?A ten-year-old girlcombs her mother’s hair,where crows of rivalriesare quietly nesting.The home will neverbe hers.In a corner of her minda living green mangodrops softly to earth.

only a weariness remains.I am that stranger nowmy mirror holds to me;the moment’s silencehardly moves across the glass.I pity myself in another’s guise.And no one’s back here, no oneI can recognize, and from my sideI see nothing. Years have passedsince I sat with you, watchingthe sky grow lonelier with cloudlessness,waiting for your body to make…

only a weariness remains.I am that stranger nowmy mirror holds to me;the moment’s silencehardly moves across the glass.I pity myself in another’s guise.And no one’s back here, no oneI can recognize, and from my sideI see nothing. Years have passedsince I sat with you, watchingthe sky grow lonelier with cloudlessness,waiting for your body to make…

long-legged, unsteady—or trucks going past the high road:such things only claimthat I am looking out in search of memory,not death. Those little kisses on our cheeksmy long-dead grandmother gave me, orthe soft dampness of my tears whenmy mother did not notice mefrom beyond the closed door of her youth.Today the dangling thread stops half-way down,where…