close your eyes –
what you now see
belongs to you
Günter Eich
0.
I you he she we you they them – the apertures of zero open – – –
1.
when the reptile, tangled in the hair of time, holding it with its legs mouths
the apple of paradise
2.
when the kingfisher, stiff on a branch, above the current aims for the young fish –
I am its color, the game of the poison of bile, its reflection, a shadow on the bottom,
of which it is not afraid
3.
when in the neglected city with a teargas pistol in my bosom (it is
loaded with me) I see the sinking shacks of Šnipiškės, near them are still partying,
shouting the shadows of men, women children
they died like that – like that, there, human
4.
when the last movements of the eyes under water, the last bubbles
of air rising from the mouth, draws closer the beauty writhing with snakes
5.
– – – I understood only just now – and it appears too late – good fortune is when
you can do everything slowly: die or lift the weight, sink floating on the Lethe
on a tarpaulin or let go a quetzal’s feather on a humming saw, cut
the arm of the cherry tree on which I now sit – – –
(because of the quivering ripened red eye-pupils fall from hands, roll –
they are pressed by the foot of a tail-coated black angel)
6.
when I pinch the comet’s tail with the door – – –
7.
when I catch myself talking with a dead god, offer him calvados,
invite him into the recovery room, what’s worst – he happily keeps
company with me, asks me to lend him a little – – –
8.
when you are god’s unpaid honorarium for his dubious creative work
9.
when feeling the rhythm I go down the stairs into the absolute darkness below
– – –
children sitting on a small bench keep rhythm with tin spoons as
after daybreak – and if they stopped?
10.
when belching with lamb-meat, with blood on the other side of the world causes
earthquakes, rivers overflow their banks, kicking off their boat shoes, and
do not return, the radio during the sports news laconically announces
in a castrato’s voice: “In Somalia during the flood crocodiles harvested 8 people”
–
enjoy!
11.
nature has no nationality – that consoles me
12.
who will say that time is not the “o” hole in the word psychosis
but the stabbings of a knife – black stains on the “i” in the word demise
a hook in the back – the flourish of the letter r” in the word horizon
that’s how signs and language fall apart, only criminal offences and sorties remain,
psychosis, demise, horizon – language first gives birth to demons –
poetry as unimaginable as if after fierce butchery
(all the dots above the “i” are an illusion)
13.
when I’ve thrown my head back at dusk, in the centre of Vilnius, I watch the horde
of black crows swooping in gusts of wind on the steppes of heaven, in no way able
to understand – what determines the direction of its movement? wind, darkness,
chance or the spears of the naked trees?
14.
when we all cut ourselves – and not for anything base – but from custom –
blessed silence will stand – it will be shaken by hummingbirds fat from blood
(I would like there to be small lumps of silt or clots under their nails)
15.
while sitting at the table, during my grandfather’s funeral, my father’s hair begins
to burn – I sit alongside, sit with fish eyes (the image of bait frozen in
my pupils) biting the fork – just don’t laugh – it’s not funny – the hands
of heaven are too ferocious
16.
when clocks tick geminating death – we must try to help this time
end itself
17.
poetry must put you it into a corner or a goal stretching across the entire horizon,
take away the final hope – only then do you begin to live without leaning on
illusions – – –
it seems I stand there myself – a blind crippled goalkeeper – overtaken by palsy
with a hiccupping prostate before the epoch’s wall, wanting as if to unmask
something – – –
18.
only longing can still rescue our heads and thought up (the most
real) gods. longing not for something concrete, not thing or time, not woman, but longing of its own accord, which rounds out like dirt
the long-worked knife
EN 
MK