Rockface. Out on the sun-warmed lichens the insects scurry, they’re in a rush like second hands—the pine throws a shadow, it moves slowly like an hour hand—inside me time stands still, an infinity of time, the time required to forget all languages and to invent perpetuum mobile.
On the lee side you can hear the grass growing: a faint drumming from underneath, a faint roar of millions of little gas flames, that’s what it’s like to hear the grass growing.
And now: the width of water, without doors, the open frontier
that grows broader and broader
the further out you reach.
There are days when the Baltic is a calm endless roof.
Then dream your naïve dreams about someone crawling on the roof trying to sort out the flag-lines,
trying to hoist
the rag—
the flag that is so eroded by the wind and blackened by the funnels and bleached by the sun it can be everyone’s.
But it’s a long way to Liepaja.
5
July 30th. The strait has become eccentric—swarming with jellyfish today for the first time in years, they pump themselves forward calmly and patiently, they belong to the same line: Aurelia, they drift like flowers after a sea burial, if you take them out of the water their entire form vanishes, as when an indescribable truth is lifted out of silence and formulated into an inert mass, but they are untranslatable, they must stay in their own element.
August 2nd. Something wants to be said but the words don’t agree.
Something which can’t be said,
aphasia,
there are no words but perhaps a style . . .
You can wake up in the small hours
jot down a few words
on the nearest paper, a newsprint margin
(the words radiate meaning!)
but in the morning: the same words now say nothing, scrawls, slips of the tongue.
Or fragments of the high nocturnal style that drew past?
Music comes to a man, he’s a composer, he’s played, makes a career, becomes Conservatory Director.
The climate changes, he’s condemned by the authorities.
His pupil K is set up as prosecutor.
He’s threatened, degraded, removed.
After a few years the disgrace lessens, he’s rehabilitated.
Then, cerebral hemorrhage: paralysis on the right side with aphasia, can grasp only short phrases, says the wrong words.
Beyond the reach of eulogy or execration.
But the music’s left, he keeps composing in his own style,
for the rest of his days he becomes a medical sensation.
He wrote music to texts he no longer understood—
in the same way
we express something through our lives
in the humming chorus full of mistaken words.
The death-lectures went on for several terms. I attended
together with people I didn’t know
(who are you?)
—then each went his own way, profiles.
I looked at the sky and at the earth and straight ahead
and since then I’ve been writing a long letter to the dead
on a typewriter with no ribbon just a horizon line
so the words knock in vain and nothing sticks.
I pause with my hand on the door handle, take the pulse of the house.
The walls are so full of life
(the children don’t dare sleep alone in the little room upstairs—what makes me safe makes them uneasy).
August 3rd. In the damp grass
a greeting shuffles from the Middle Ages, the Edible Snail,
subtle gleaming grey-and-yellow, with his house aslant,
introduced by monks who liked their escargots—the Franciscans were here,
broke stone and burned lime, the island became theirs in 1288, a gift of King Magnus
(“Almes fordoth all wykkednes / And quenchyth synne and makyth hyt les”)
the forest fell, the ovens burned, the lime was shipped in
for the building of the monastery . . .
Sister snail
almost motionless in the grass, the antennae are sucked in
and rolled out, disturbances and hesitation . . .
How like myself in my searching!
The wind that’s been blowing carefully all day
—the blades of grass on the outer skerries are all counted—
has lain down peacefully at the heart of the island. The match flame stands straight.
The sea painting and the forest painting darken together.
The foliage on the five-story trees turns black.
“Each summer is the last.” Empty words
for the creatures in the late-summer midnight
where the crickets whirr their sewing machines frantically
and the Baltic is close
and the lonely water tap rises among the wild roses
like the statue of a horseman. The water tastes of iron.
6
Grandmother’s story before it’s forgotten: her parents die young
father first. When the widow knows the disease will take her too
she walks from house to house, sails from island to island
with her daughter. “Who can take Maria?” A strange house
on the other side of the bay takes her. There they have the means.
But that didn’t make them good. The mask of piety cracks.
Maria’s childhood ends too early, she’s an unpaid servant
in perpetual coldness. Year after year. Perpetual seasickness
during the long stints of rowing, solemn terror
at table, the looks, the pike-skin scrunching
in her mouth: be grateful, be grateful.
She never looked back
but because of that she could see what was new
and catch hold of it.
Out of encirclement.
I remember her. I would press close to her
and at the moment of death (the moment of crossing?) she sent out a thought
so that I—a five-year-old—understood what happened
half an hour before they rang.
Her I remember. But in the next brown photo
the unknown man—
dated by his clothes to the middle of the last century.
A man around thirty: the vigorous eyebrows,
the face looking straight into my eyes
and whispering: “Here I am.”
But who “I” am
there’s no one anymore who remembers. No one.
TB? Isolation?
Once coming up from the sea
on the stony slope steaming with grass he stopped
and felt the black bandage on his eyes.
Here, behind dense thickets—is it the island’s oldest house?
The low, two-centuries-old fisherman’s hut, log-cabin style, with heavy coarse grey timbers.
And the modern brass padlock has clicked it all together and shines like the ring in the nose of an old bull
who refuses to get up.
So much wood crouching. On the roof the ancient tiles that have slipped downways and crossways over each other
(the original pattern deranged over the years by the rotation of the earth)
it reminds me of something . . . I was there . . . wait: it’s the old Jewish cemetery in Prague
where the dead live more packed than they were in life, the stones packed packed.
So much love encircled! The tiles with their lichen-script in an unknown tongue
are the stones in the ghetto cemetery of the archipelago folk, the stones raised and tumbled. —
The hovel is lit up
with all those who were driven by a certain wave, by a certain wind
right out here to their fates.
THE TRUTHBARRIER
SANNINGSBARRIÄREN
1978
• I •
Citoyens
The night after the accident I dreamt of a pockmarked man
who walked through the alleys singing.
Danton!
Not the other one—Robespierre doesn’t take such walks,
Robespierre spends a careful hour each morning on his toilette,
the rest of the day he devotes to The People.
In the paradise of the pamphlets, among the machines of virtue.
Danton—
or the man who wore his mask
seemed to be standing on stilts.
I saw his face from beneath.
Like the scarred moon,
half in light, half in mourning.
I wanted to say something.
A weight in the breast, the plummet
that makes the clocks go,
the hands turn: year 1, year 2 . . .
A sharp scent like sawdust in the tiger stalls.
And—as always in dreams—no sun.
But the walls were shining
in the alleys that curved
down to the waiting room, the curved room,
the waiting room where we all . . .
The Crossing-Place
Ice-wind in my eyes and the suns dance
in the kaleidoscope of tears as I cross
the street that’s followed me for so long, the street
where Greenland-summer shines from puddles.
Around me the whole strength of the street swarms,
power that remembers nothing, wants nothing.
For a thousand years, in the earth deep
under traffic the unborn forest quietly waits.
I get the idea that the street can see me.
Its sight is so dim the sun itself
is a grey ball in a black space.
But right now I am shining! The street sees me.
The Clearing
Deep in the forest there’s an unexpected clearing that can be reached only by someone who has lost his way.
The clearing is enclosed in a forest that is choking itself. Black trunks with the ashy beard stubble of lichen. The trees are tangled tightly together and are dead right up to the tops, where a few solitary green twigs touch the light. Beneath them: shadow brooding on shadow, and the swamp growing.
But in the open space the grass is unexpectedly green and alive. There are big stones lying here as if they’d been arranged. They must be the foundation stones of a house, but I could be wrong. Who lived here? No one can tell us. The names exist somewhere in an archive that no one opens (only archives stay young). The oral tradition has died and with it the memories. The gypsy people remember but those who have learned to write forget. Write down, and forget.
The homestead murmurs with voices, it is the center of the world. But the inhabitants die or move out, the chronicle breaks off. Desolate for many years. And the homestead becomes a sphinx. At last everything’s gone, except the foundation stones.
Somehow I’ve been here before, but now I must go. I dive in among the thickets. I can push my way through only with one step forward and two to the side, like a chess knight. Bit by bit the forest thins and lightens. My steps get longer. A footpath creeps toward me. I am back in the communications network.
On the humming electricity pole a beetle is sitting in the sun. Beneath the shining wing covers its wings are folded up as ingeniously as a parachute packed by an expert.
How the Late Autumn Night Novel Begins
The ferryboat smells of oil and something rattles all the time like an obsession. The spotlight’s turned on. We’re pulling into the jetty. I’m the only one who wants off here. “Need the gangway?” No. I take a long tottering stride into the night and stand on the jetty, on the island. I feel wet and unwieldy, a butterfly that just crawled out of its cocoon, the plastic bags in each hand hang like misshapen wings. I turn around and see the boat gliding away with its shining windows, then grope my way toward the house that has been empty for so long. There’s no one in any of the other houses. . . . It’s good to fall asleep here. I lie on my back and don’t know if I’m asleep or awake. Some books I’ve read pass by like old sailing ships on their way to the Bermuda Triangle to vanish without trace. . . . I hear a hollow sound, an absentminded drumming. An object the wind keeps knocking against something the earth holds still. If the night is not merely an absence of light, if the night really is something, then it’s that sound. Stethoscope noises form a slow heart, it beats, falls silent for a time, returns. As if the creature were moving in a zigzag across the Frontier. Or someone knocking in a wall, someone who belongs to the other world but was left behind here, knocking, wanting back. Too late. Couldn’t get down there, couldn’t get up there, couldn’t get aboard. . . . The other world is this world too. Next morning I see a sizzling golden-brown branch. A crawling stack of roots. Stones with faces. The forest is full of abandoned monsters that I love.
To Mats and Laila
The Dateline says still between Samoa and Tonga but the Midnightline glides forward over the ocean and the islands and the roofs of cabins. They’re asleep on the other side. Here in Värmland it’s broad daylight, a day in early summer with a burning sun—I’ve thrown aside my luggage. A swim in the sky, the air’s so blue . . . Then suddenly I see the ridges on the other side of the lake: they are clean-cut. Like the shaved parts of a patient’s head before he has a brain operation. It’s been there all the time, I haven’t seen it until now. Blinkers and a stiff neck . . . The journey continues. The landscape is now full of hatching and lines, like the old engravings where people wandered among hills and mountains that resembled anthills and villages also composed of thousands of strokes. And each man-ant brought his own little stroke to add to the big engraving; there was no proper center but everything was alive. Something else: the figures are small but each has his own face, the engraver has not denied them that—they are no ants. Most of them are simple people though they can write their names. Proteus on the other hand is a modern man who expresses himself fluently in every style, comes with a “straight message” or empty flourishes depending on which gang he belongs to at that moment. He can’t write his name. He shies away from it like a werewolf from a silver bullet. They don’t ask for it either, the hydra of the Company or the hydra of the State. . . . The journey continues. In this house lives a man who became desperate one evening and shot at the empty hammock swaying above the grass. And the Midnightline comes closer; it’ll soon have covered half its course. (And don’t make out I want to turn the clock back.) Tiredness will stream in through the hole left by the sun. . . . For me it’s never happened that the diamond of a certain moment cut an indelible score across the world-picture. No, it was wear and tear that rubbed out the bright strange smile. But something’s in the process of becoming visible again, it’s being worn in, begins to look like a smile, no one knows what it’s worth. Unaccounted for. Someone catches at my arm each time I try to write.
From the Winter of 1947
Days at school, that muffled thronging fortress.
At dusk I walked home under the shop signs.
Then the whispering without lips: “Wake up, sleepwalker!”
And every object pointed to The Room.
Fifth floor, a view of the yard. The lamp burned
in a circle of terror night after night.
I sat in bed without eyelids, saw filmstrips
filmstrips with the thoughts of insane people.
As if it were necessary . . .
As if the last childhood were being broken up
to make it pass through the grid.
As if it were necessary . . .
I read in books of glass but saw only the other:
the stains pushing through the wallpaper.
It was the living dead
who wanted their portraits painted. . . .
Till dawn when the trashmen came
clattering the metal cans below.
The backyard’s peaceful grey bells
rin
ging me to sleep.
• II •
Schubertiana
1
In the evening darkness in a place outside New York, a viewpoint where one single glance will encompass the homes of eight million people.
The giant city becomes a long shimmering drift, a spiral galaxy seen from the side.
Within the galaxy coffee cups are pushed across the counter, the shop windows beg from passersby, a flurry of shoes leave no prints.
The climbing fire escapes, elevator doors glide shut, behind police-locked doors a perpetual seethe of voices.
Slouched bodies doze in subway cars, the hurtling catacombs.
I know too—without statistics—that right now Schubert is being played in a room over there and that for someone the notes are more real than anything else.
2
The endless expanses of the human brain are crumpled to the size of a fist.
In April the swallow returns to last year’s nest under the guttering of this very barn in this very parish.
She flies from Transvaal, passes the equator, flies for six weeks over two continents, makes for precisely this vanishing dot in the landmass.
And the man who catches the signals from a whole life in a few ordinary chords for five strings,
who makes a river flow through the eye of a needle,
is a stout young gentleman from Vienna known to his friends as “The Mushroom,” who slept with his glasses on
and stood at his writing desk punctually in the morning.
And then the wonderful centipedes of his manuscript were set in motion.
3
The string quintet is playing. I walk home through warm forests with the ground springy under me,
curl up like an embryo, fall asleep, roll weightless into the future, suddenly feel that the plants have thoughts.
4
The Great Enigma: New Collected Poems Page 9
