Let’s spit you and I let’s spit
on what we used to love
on what the two of us used to love
if you want because this poem both of us
is a waltz and I can see
the dark and incomparable passing between us
A dialogue of mirrors abandoned
in a baggage-claim someplace Foligno maybe
or Auvergne la Bourboule
Some names are charged with remote thunder
Can we spit the two of us on these vast countries
where little rental cars wander
Can we because something must still
Something
unite us can we spit
you and I it’s a waltz
a kind of fortuitous sob
Let’s spit let’s spit small cars
Let’s spit that’s an order
A waltz of mirrors
A dialogue nowhere
Listen these vast countries where wind
cries over what we loved
One of them is a horse on its elbows
the other a corpse shaking out a sheet the otherthe trace of your steps I remember an empty village
at the shoulder of a burned mountain
I can still see your shoulder
I can still see your elbows
I can still see your sheets
I can still see your steps
I can still see a town where there was no horse
I remember your burning stare
My empty heart a dead Mazeppa a horse
carries before me like that day on the mountain
Liquor fueled my race through martyr oaks
bleeding prophetically while
daylight died on blue trucks
I remember a lot of things
a lot of evenings
a lot of rooms
a lot of stairs
a lot of rages
a lot of stops in useless places
where the spirit of mystery still tried to rise
like the cry of a blind boy in a border station
I can still see
So I’m speaking in past tense Laugh
at the sound of my words if you have to
He loved Was Came Caressed
Waited Watched over the creaking stairs
O violence violence I’m a haunted manaited Waited deep wells
I thought I’d die waiting
Silence sharpened pencils in the street
Sputtering taxi sped off to die somewhere else
Waited waited suffocated voices
Before the door the language of doors
Hiccup of houses Waited
Familiar objects took turns taking on
Waited the ghostlike look Waited
of convicts escaped Waited
Waited God damn
from a penitentiary of lights and suddenly
No Stupid No
Idiot
The shoe trampled the wool of the rug
I barely come back
Loved loved loved but you can’t know how much
Loved it’s past
Loved loved loved loved loved
O violence
It’s nothing but a joke to those
who talk about love like they talk about a cousin
Fuck all that pretense
Do you know when it truly becomes a story
Love
Do you know
When every breath turns tragichen the colors of daylight provoke laughter
A draft a shadow in shade a name erased
Everything should burn and you know deep down
that everything does burn
and you say Let everything burn
and the sky smells like scattered sand
Love you bastards love for you
is when you happen to sleep together
Happen to
And afterwards Ha ha all of love is in this
And afterwards
we happen to speak of what it is
to sleep together for years
Do you hear
For years
like sails collapsing
onto the deck of a ship loaded with plague
in a movie I just saw
One by one
The white rose dies like the red rose
What is it then that so moves me
in these last words
The word last maybe a word in which
everything is terrible terribly irreparable
and heartbreaking Word panther Word electric
chair
The last word of love imagine that
and the last kiss and the lastonchalance
and the last sleep Look it’s funny
I was only thinking of the last night
Yes everything assumes this cursed meaning
What I meant to say is the last moments
the last goodbyes the last sigh
the last look
The dread the dread the dread
for years dread
Can we just spit
on what we loved together
Let’s spit on love
on our unmade beds
on our silence and on stammered words
on the stars even if they were
your eyes
on the sun even if it was
your teeth
on infinity even if it was
your mouth
and on our love
even if it was
your love
Can we just spit
Translated by Jeff Clark
