Excerpt from No Shelter

I FOLLOW YOU

To see oneself without the world,
not to recognize oneself in the mirror.
How fragile
we are, and frail,
made only of meat and bone.
The finest feelings come clear
in the tangible memory of someone
whose appearance is already intangible.
As children,
we swallow the void,
what is yours without you,
me.
Wanting a voice to fill us,
we strain to hear echoes within
which never stop
dreaming of their origins.
Happy is she who can face
all that withdraws
and remains.



from AURORA

III.

Many your heavens,
plentiful your spheres
turning as one singular
open earth,
in whose center boils
the water of light.
Its remembrance brings vision
to those who, seconds before death, want nothing.
The ear, and within,
the void's tiny echo.

DRAMATIS PERSONAE

My voice went on, its tones varying.
It paused. It believed it could not go on
and it continued.
In this manner it articulated a path
never before described,
a place of which it was part
without knowing it.
To which it returned afterward.
It opened its doors,
allowing a beginning for the ears.
The cochlea surging forward,
satiating all expectations,
penetrating the body
in whelming red.

Later your blizzard voice
from the bowers
of hibernal forests,
orchards in the tundra,
from the oak, the cedar,
and from the tamarind,
blew across the awakened ones
who continue on their way
savoring
the dry melodies
of thunder.



DEATH OF THE KISS

You, prayer,
you, blasphemy,
you, razor in the prayer
of my silence.
-- Paul Celan

Fons

I wanted to find you inside me,
knowing the concavities of that dark place
would give me vertigo.
I wanted, I searched out your face.
I wanted, any way I could, to contemplate
the part of you within me
that would bring along the rest
and join my mouth to yours, others,
to see how the dream goes.
To know that in all, there are two
salivas, rivers of life,
influent, influential,
to know
that I know, what I know,
fiery tongues submerged
in this sea of enigmas,
gold, bathed in gold.
The Word comes forth spoken
and it is death written down,
a divine substance eternally
kissing the sheen of a marine light.
Mors osculi
formed of loving, desiring, deciphering the pure,
the impure figure, a language that says
In the beginning
conjugated and sublimated:
I am that I am,
come to me,
approach with your mouth open,
feel my breath,
fill yourself on the Name,
open your eyes and you will see
Nothing.

English language translation copyright 2002 by Forrest Gander. All rights reserved.