The Forgiveness of Sins and other poems

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The Forgiveness of Sins

Translated by Mark Baczoni 

 

The noise of the cleaning machines is like that

of the men in the confessional come by bus from town.

What if they stopped talking one after the other

eventually, they would make a chorus of silence.

 

There's a few split seconds of delay

between my right eye blinking and my left

that makes for interference, and with time

the piers of the bridges in my mouth loosen.

 

The apsis closes over me like the shell of a husk.

My doubt is the axis around which this temple revolves.

That which I have never confessed piles up,

nearing, but never reaching, the point of being said.


 

The Visit

 

These words, too, we have now threshed

the treasured fibrous wheat of thought

and what was left, at the end of that,

rotted anyway

as it does every winter.

 

You can feel the warmth of

the stables-cum-summer kitchen in your bones

but who knows who's cooking here, the soup is cold,

and you were far too liberal with the salt

and tallow.

 

The leaves of the trees have gone black:

ruined teeth in the snowstorm's mouth.

And the branches of our disquiet are too thick and dark

to let anything we could call consolation

shine through them.

 

 


 

Portakabins

 

The routine of portakabins, metal fences

has dissolved into the disinfectant white of waiting rooms,

contoured reception desks, hospital-green sofas.
Habit has been replaced by a sort of determined

stubbornness, though as plans go, I would hardly call it

daring.

 

It was clear: if I carelessly give way to what

by its very nature crops up as temptation,

then a single rash decision can bring with it

a whole caravan of consequences.

In the interests of the goal, only a resilient background

could ensure the ideal circumstances.

 

//

 

I was hard-headed, at long last, determined, I knew

that if I grabbed that door handle and pushed down,
the room would explode into the darkness:
I step out, and immediately start gaining mass,
drawn towards the geographical centre of the forest,

memorable cracks radiating out, “branchstill”

the nakedness of noise.

 

Only I can be the hero of my poem

and this upside-down glass

on the chipboard table: furrowed alienness.

Or that layer of dust on the tomato, the

brownish, overripe spots of the peach

as they spread out in rings, like saltmarks

the bright green burgeoning mould.

 

Caring is what I do every day,

and that has nothing to do with

exhaustion, but the wood still remains stubborn

even as it readies to my hand.

Through the spade I see the ore,

the cathedral the quarry, and there's a wound

on the site of all creation.

 

//

 

I'm full up with the city, I long

to be back in a purer surfeit

where the wood is a kindly wastefulness, and rambling

is time frittered without guilt.

 

But instead, an end-of-summer feast, and orchids

a starry carpet of fluorescent plankton

on the front of the laser-wrapped basilica,

and product samples in the magazines, smart carbon alloys,

but what is most convincing in its purposiveness

are the geraniums and gentian, as history, like

a Baroque allegory, sprouting out of the ruins.

 

//

 

The slow decay of the copse is a chance

that I pass up, but it isn't only mine.

What I mark out in space: a swollen knot

my associations accrete. The heart of memory

suddenly collapses, the valley coils up around me.

 

Look, the marshalled markers of spring,

the obedient expanding circles of the wind, in the middle

a smaller central part surrounded by flowers.

Their smoothness stretched tight upon them, their roughness

pricking stubbornly out, the communicating vessels of the stalks,

the truth of the petals taking the place of the bud, now.

 


 

Greenland 

 

Translated by Mark Baczoni

 

You cannot see the obelisks and stalactites of ice.

They would be somewhere in the center of the eye,

rising over the glacier’s plane, if the shrinking ice floe

of the pupil wasn’t a black box for light, surrounded

by the fibrous gray-green slush of the sea

as the opiates force it to constrict.

 

We stare at the peeling plywood edging curling up off the table
where the glue must have given up long ago,
its spiral leading our gaze to the white sheet
covering the bed, and to the tube sticking out of
your paw while they tell us to be prepared;
they’ll give you a sedative to knock you out,
and though your eyes will stay open throughout,
they explain, we shouldn’t be frightened,
you won’t be aware of the outside world anymore.

 

Only after that will you get the second dose, T61, embutramide,
which will stop your breathing, then your circulation,
until finally your muscles go limp. Involuntary urination
and defecation may occur, sudden twitches.
And as the snow starts to melt in the cirque,
the water seeps in at the cracks, and permeates
the entire mass of the firn, finally exiting
as a stream through the glacier gate.

 

This might be accompanied by sudden sounds,

convulsions. At this point, the relatives mostly leave,

but we’ll hold your head throughout,

we’ll be beside you as you go.

 

Then we’ll drive home in our silent cars,

we’ll bury you in the back garden,

and reassure ourselves that we did it all for you.

But in the afternoon, when for a moment we close our eyes,
we’ll feel something slowly, imperturbably
sliding towards the edges of sleep,
sled-dogs up to their ankles in the melting ice,
and outside, beyond the window a drowsy Sunday flickers,
somewhere nearby an angle-grinder drones.

 

 

 

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