but with a tearing flutter

if my thoughts could turn into ravens 

fly i would whisper fly


 

(it is not with a whisper, but with a tearing flutter
that they will settle, laying the night
upon your white body)

on a moonless night

like a black cat
i come to you
in my dream

longing burning

breasts racing fire

heart in flames

my body is

the field of dreams

this moonless spring

of your lust

.

of sumptuous reveries and demon-lovers (in the Oriental Garden)

The air in the café was thick with shadows and smoke. His face half-turned away, his eyes half-closed, at times only the cigarette seemed alive in his fingers. There is something unsettling about every effigy, i thought, and the moon, the moon in the window frame bathing him in silver, for some unknown reason i kept thinking about the moon. Then, he turned to me all of a sudden, leaned forward and i thought he would finally reach for my hand. I was pale, i think. Those who say that a body cannot wait should have lived those few seconds of waiting inside my hand, the blue veins running helplessly under the skin. The skin too was paler than the moon. I wanted to give him my wrists.

Instead, he said, "Ah, late antiquity is when we should have lived. The times were romantic, the air was pure, lilacs never died, minarets were flexible, dates, musk and myrrh were like gold dust." The coffee spoon seemed a moon ray bent by some strange magic, at times a glittery snake between his fingers and oh, how i wished for my hair to be that silvery snake, that ray of the moon bent by his dark fingers. The air between him and me, that hollow space which didn't reflect any light back.

He spoke again, and this time he looked into my eyes, and i knew i had to say something but his voice seemed to reach me from such a distance, like the moon through layers of black water. I have to say something, i thought, and became really nervous about it, as if my life itself depended upon my answer, which was rather silly actually, since he was talking of myrrh and horses and oases, none of which really existed, i mean existing in this world of mine, of ours, where the air was heavy with muffled whispers and the moon a tight seal upon my lips.

"Would you have loved to travel with me then," he asked, "on horse or camel, searching for an oasis? But why should we have traveled then, we could have just walked, or, even better, we could have just stood there and the oasis would have sprung forth around us, like a poem. Tell me."

The moon disappeared behind a cloud and the shadows on the walls suddenly faded away. When i turned my face to him, such paleness on my tongue, such hunger for one word, just one word, he was gone too, the last shadow.

Later at home, while waiting for dawn and who says that waiting cannot tear through one's blood and bones like a whip, i opened the book and read:

So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round:
And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;
And here were forests ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.

But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted
Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!
A savage place! as holy and enchanted
As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her demon-lover!

This post continues the series dedicated to the amazing Gardens of the World, which i visited in the Recreational Park Marzahn, in Berlin. You can read more here.

..

yellow

despair is yellow - said the blue peacock -
you poets live off metaphors, i laughed.
with sweet disdain forsythia bloomed everywhere,
my dress glimmered with little yellow butterflies
which made you smile.

despair is yellow. i ask you to come to my throat
like a knife, i sweep through you recklessly,
once more, before the last.

time spreads in us both its peacock tail.
we fumble for the fall of leaves, for the thinned blood,
we live off metaphors, once more, before the last.

..

the bench that was

We remained in the station on a wooden bench. We spent the night, and I left before him. Even now I find it really astonishing and very moving. It was a kind of madness, idiocy, to travel from Munich to the Jura to pass a few hours of the night with me. It was utterly inhuman to sit next to a being whom you sense desires you so much and not even to have been touched. Above all, I thought, I must be very careful with everything I say to him because he understands things in quite an alarming way, in an absolute way.

Gabrielle Buffet-Picabia remembering Duchamp,
in Calvin Tomkins's Duchamp: A Biography

..

the fan dancer

i remember you in the summer room
filled with sun and ripe cherries.
the dark purple of cherries around your nails, like blood.
i remember you dancing for me in the summer afternoon,
your dress pierced with seeds of light.
the fan moved like a bird in your hand.
you looked at me and something like a bird
moved within my heart as well.
but it was when you hid your face, oh
that darkness pierced me,
as it pierces your dress when you take it off,
as it pierces the air longing for your hand
to pick up the fan again.



































..

lovers are always the victims of torches and chance (even - or especially those on a Paris bridge)

In the back of your car
Where the light from the stars
Caught our eyes in a moment of blue
It was then that I knew
All my feelings were true
And what lovers like us have to do

I looked at the time
And the time ran so fast
Like an arrow that flies to the heart
And I thought that a lifetime
Would not be enough time
To delight in this pleasure so dark

Lovers are mortal
Their hearts are the size of night clouds
Lovers are mortal
Their actions are jealous and proud
Lovers are losers
And who knows the bruises they bear
For lovers are mortal
As frail as the breath that they share

In the shadows of doorways
Where lovers are always
The victims of torches and chance
I would hold you so near
'til the scent of your hair
Sent me reeling my mind in a trance

Oh I still can recall
The soft music of rain falling
Silver and cool in the night
And it washed through our love
Like a river in flood
Like an ocean of tears shining bright

And I like to believe
That the memories we weave
Are the bittersweet echoes of dreams
In the evening their call strays
From yesterdays hallways
Like the faraway chimes on the breeze

Lovers are mortal
Their hearts are the size of night clouds
Lovers are mortal
Their actions are jealous and proud
Lovers are losers
And who knows the bruises they bear
For lovers are mortal
As frail as the breath that they share