10 POEMS ABOUT SEPARATION

I

We parted in life and death
Two bodies separated
Our hearts separated
Our voices separated, one from the other

Our hands separated
Our smells
Our waking up together in bed
Our laughing together
Our tears
Our dreams separated, one from the other

The dark night of the soul
Suddenly occluded everything

II

Not just for the two of us
But for all of life, I’m sorry
In the photographs
The memory of a night

I am so much alone
It’s like I’m dead
The old me is fading
And I can’t become a new person

With amicable steps, sorrow
Comes and curls up with my heart
Life is serene
Like houses in the dawn

It’s as if nothing at all happened
The two of us are just gone
There isn’t any two of us anymore
The sea is always there
And the trees in their same dreams

III

The May morning sings its song in my heart
And the sound of a bird’s wings
A bird’s wing sound
The crying of a child

I am digging at the heart of the earth
Flowers gush forth and a May morning
I am digging at love
Agonies gush forth and unspoken words

Life calls out a challenge to me
And I am struggling anew to take hold of it
I am lying in wait
Taking aim with my sling

On a May morning, I’m a child
Not yet bruised, beautiful as green almond
I am challenging life
With as yet unwritten poems

IV

You’ll become someone else, even if you don’t want to
When another skin touches your skin
When your body connects with another body
Your breath mingles with another breath

You’ll become someone else, even if you don’t want to
While you’re asleep at night or in the middle of the day
Without warning, you’ll be startled by a feeling
As though you’ve stumbled on the brink of a precipice

You’ll become someone else, even if you don’t want to
Your clothes that bear traces of my gaze
Will exhaust their lives one by one
An armoire, a flower in the window, will change its place

You’ll become someone else, even if you don’t want to
A crease on your lip that came after me
A tone to your laughter that I don’t really know
And your eyes that have already begun to forget me

And then, and then you are finally someone else


V

Where the word ends
The heart begins to talk to itself
Some guy nails up a coffin
In the dim light of morning

Poetry
Begins where I start talking to myself
Like a candle
Starting to burn with a crackle

Of a morning, I
Seem to be in my childhood
If I don’t stir
It seems that life will hold still

A vanishing love
Is like a vanishing childhood
Sorrow is stark naked on a summer noon
And casts no shadow


VI

Past time
If remembered, is right now
Or else it’s torn out and thrown away
Like a page from a notebook

What’s torn out and thrown away
Can be a fluttering heart
Or else a summer night
Its stars dying in agony


VII

Beneath my tongue there’s longing
And a muddled plea
Drowned recollecting
Can’t bring you back to me

Poems can’t bring you back
Nor can a summer’s left-over crumbs
If only I could have become a stone
Sleep or wind

Springtime will again come along
Perhaps I will again be happy too
They’ll resemble a mute singer’s song
My happinesses after you


VIII

Like growing accustomed to a death
It will pass, the love we have for one another
A person doesn’t have but one face
Nor a single destiny

When I sleep in a bed of stone
What pains me in the darkness
Is to think that without her I could still be

It is night, the damp voice of the wind
When it fills up my eyes with darkness
Summons the angel of hostility


IX

Have a good death, sir, some midnight when a bleeding wind blows
Have a good death, where the deepest water flows

Let the acacia flowers grow purple and roses grow abundant
Have a good death, you spring-times past and present

A messy autumn comes, its eye-sockets wet
A rain squall passes down the street barefoot

Have a good death, sir, may your mouth be sealed shut and eyes
For in a weary fall, with its bruises, it is good to die


X

A broken heart like shards of glass inside me
I close the pages of a worn-out book
Dusty sorrows, the taste of a faded smile

Now I am closing the pages of a worn-out life
Closing the doors of a bye-gone sea