Helen (II)

Or how their passing by leaves stones in the pit of my gut
taste of sleep on the mouth

and afterimage
caprice of eyes so still

"Your
face
bewilders
me,
you
are
such
a
breather."

"ᴋʏʟʏᴛᴇᴍɴᴇsᴛʀᴀ: Go ahead, but if you go off to war and leave me behind in the house,
and you are over there, during your long absence
what sort of feelings do you think I will have in that house,
when I see the chairs she used to sit in empty,
and her bedroom empty, and I sit alone"

this is the stab in the throat
that bleeds five whole hours after.

you know his name
or this sense of his coat against your palm

What is this new
         what is this you so woe-compressed you'd do the same
                   as her as him you’d do the same
wouldn't you you do the same

"The Mind is so near itself – it cannot see, distinctly – and I have none to ask –"

"During the days and weeks I was working on this play I used to dream about translating. One night I dreamed that the text of the play was a big solid glass house. I gloated above the house trying to zero in on v. 363. I was carrying in my hands wrapped in a piece of black cloth the perfect English equivalent for lupein and I kept trying to force myself down through the glass atmosphere of the house to position this word in its right place. But there was an upward pressure as heavy as water. I couldn't move down, I swam helplessly back and forth on the surface of the transparency, waving my black object and staring down at the text through fathoms of glass."

ᴅᴇᴀᴅ ʜᴏᴘᴇ sidewinds away no longer
blood in this I try to say when it goes I go too or slip
lose routine
time measured by moon now light always clawing off it

"A.M. dread"

O
wane. earth pushing back
stones do not want me. do not want

"Besos brujos que me matan."

We must be drunk, I think. You seem to move with your eyes shut. Four of us picking our way along the grass bank sloped over Princess Road, throats full of cackles that seem to yawn. Calling out songs I don’t recognise. We’re all around ourselves. Beside ourselves. Each step staggers. Knowing where each other is by their footsteps, their breaths, their stumbles. It is bright enough to see under the street lights but we do not look or see. My arm brushes your arm. It is a long long walk towards your homes and it passes in breaths before it’s started. You laugh and ask why I’m still here, when you finally realise.

I should have turned hours ago. I live all the way back in the town centre. And soon enough I am alone again, on that same grass, facing the other way. I return ears still ringing with night voices more than a chorus or a clamour the hallway dark around me.

Suddenly your breath the only thing I can hear. Much much earlier you leaned into me and pushed your mouth against mine, and I inhaled. And now I’m sealing windows and doors and breathing out your air, finally. And the room fills with you, and when I move my lips it’s your words that come out.

His fire tongue his brimstone throat
we were always drawn to the flame and the heat we couldn’t hold the warmth
I couldn’t ever get to hold

but more than that I am grateful

and when they become more frequent I only worry how diminished they are

or may become

There are moments that are enough, sometimes, even as I’m worrying how to prolong them

'The House'

"It grows larger
wall after wall
sliding
on some miraculous arrangement
of panels,
blond and weightless
as balsa, making space
for windows, alcoves,
more rooms, stairways
and passages, all
bathed
in light, with here
and there the green
flower of a tree,
vines, streams
casually
breaking through —
what a change
from the cramped
room at the centre
where I began, where I crouched
and was safe,
but could hardly
breathe! Day after day
I labour at it;
night after night
I keep going —
I'm clearing new ground,
I'm lugging boards,
I'm measuring,
I'm hanging sheets of glass,
I'm nailing down the hardwoods,
The thresholds —
I'm hinging the doors —
Once they are up they will lift
their easy latches, they will open
like wings."

I do not know glaukós though I am sure
I am sure I need it.

(and the grey, what to say of the grey so grey I cannot see past it

that too though I do not own I pledge to you like I)

and the words I have not shared
the words with others I am sorry though I do not regret it you can it be that
regret comes nowhere near, blue as it is