ekleksographia

[1]

Come, nerves clod in uni-
form, voice-spearing,
hands shake-gloved. Someone
had been here, spoke of your latitudes,
prefixed my name, confused my fingers. So
come – retrace the curves,
thin them out, show me your solar plexus,
steal what I may have lost. – I'll
sit here,
pare off my phantoms into an ashtray,
look at the hunchbacks, 
the ego-carriers, crossing the ford, laughing,
conversing about injustices,
eating each other's tongues out. – I
will sit here. (Rains will come,
will count them down). And say,
won't that be cozy: I sit, read Eliot, –
you bring me coffee.

---

Hour freed from the Just

A circuit of cigarette butts, names
compacted for convenience purpose,
filed away under α and β –
followed by occasional funerals which I didn't attend, by
occasional weddings which I almost attended
somewhere on the other side of the century: a prolix, mis-
-padded time,

of which I retained nothing,
emptied the ashtray and turned the page.

We (I in its increasing plurality) waded through Easter prayers,
murdered in solitude, drank in solitude, committed
other innocent tokens of justice.
Fought prideless, cashed signatures on the napkins;
through boredom hosted the bored
extremities in the
mouth. Moved onwards,
to midnight:

café "Hawelka." – The stowaways lulled by the smoke and vapour, –
and Charon's ferry runs empty.
A fly: quintuped, quadruped, triped, legless...
– a hand transpires from smoke,
wipes the lips and closes the circuit.

---

(to my Jewish neighbour, in Vienna)

The perennial, re-lived into un-event: compiled,
complied with, – erects
a serfDome of surface-spection:

inward: a shrine –
a sigh rattling among the tall walls
from opening to opening sealed for winter,
(then lies about the green upholstery –
a living, unbreathing dust).

Daguerreotype prayers heap silences
upon one another; omitted vowels of the
faces – compiled, complied with.

One of the sea foam, one
of Apocalypses,
reclining against the green upholstery,
watering plants or looking

out into the Judenplatz, -
folds up her fingers' envelopes,
and at night leaves the door unlocked.