Speaking Alone

senseless here’s the man with the crystal contractions

with the rumor of sand with a doll’s past tense

at the hollow step in a bed of distress

nevertheless present at the passage of spring

man as long as he passes his stop is wall

wall of heavy shoulders

and now the light is black

the sun salty

water no longer quenches the children’s eyes

their words wooden

voices no longer recognizable in the little space

left ajar in their gullets of sky

and like justice at the bottom of the well

verisimilitude reflects the tarnished gold of summer’s escapes

the frankness of their hungers

howling dogs outrageous vacations

dogs with your tongues out

tugging at the rope until you lose

that rainy look in your hempen eyes

lost lost in a fur pelt

dogs who cheat the night

in the well of justice

true forged water

and lose the sparkling stones

the iron of the walls

like never seen before

horrors distresses faces

passed passed over passed away

from earth from potash from vitreous smoke

sludge sludge on the horizon

nothing but sludge where we dock

and islands of grassy vertigo

the cobblestones are deserted the loves uneasy

why love only avarice

and everywhere the void the laughable transparency of the ravine

man among men and the ditch up front

the wind underneath and from each side silence

you entered the dwelling place of dead tenderness alive

and in each step you recognized

yourself as an enticing answer

the world hasn’t changed from ash for you

nor has anguish crucified itself

a little loss a little gain it’s always the weight of windowpanes

bearing down on your dark forehead

but you are lucid in these hours that look like you

walking among your footsteps which the scales tally

through the starry years on the tree of pain

confined in the horizon of voices

no wall can resist your warm memory

faced with the broken voice

rats can run between your legs

the fine grass has yet to escape your call

with an invisible noise on the mouth and fingers

you came out alive

Source: Guernica Magazine, 2022

Tristan Tzara: “Speaking Alone”