Indeleble     


      Muerta hace cuarenta años, mi madre está cortando un corazón
      en la mesa de la cocina.
      Llueve en la puerta, aunque pronto va a ser aguanieve
      y después, de acá al bosque,
      va a nevar.

      Los ventanales de esa casa se empañarían
      en minutos,
      y podríamos haber estado solos todo el fin de semana;
      el resto de la ciudad, hasta donde sabemos, abandonada,
      sin nada del otro lado del jardín, ni iglesia, ni gente.

      Ahora está acá, en mi cocina, cortando un corazón:
      un platito con sal cerca del codo, un puñado de harina
      esparcida en la mesada, la radio encendida,
      ella trabaja igual que siempre, ensimismada,
      con el cuchillo de cocina que capta la luz de este mediodía invernal.

      Nunca creí en fantasmas y no tengo un especial interés
      de ver otra vez a mis muertos
      ¿pero cómo no aceptar lo que se niega a desvanecerse,
      como el borrón de la pintura en que una mano o un bol de porcelana
      oculta el pentimento de un pájaro cantor

      atado, o esa mancha color amapola
      que emerge una vez más
      cuando blanqueamos la pared del lavadero?
      ¿Cómo podría el niño que hay en mí
      poner en duda lo que me contaron

      del amigo de un amigo de un amigo
      que presenció esa luz que nadie podría explicar,
      un resplandor sobre el estanque donde, hace décadas,
      el hijo del panadero se cayó a través del hielo
      en el azul parafina de Año Nuevo, cuando nadie miraba?

      Recuerdo ese paseo de domingo
      cuando paramos en la niebla súbita, los árboles,
      una pausa en la blancura extensa como el cielo,
      y ella en aquel vestido verde que tanto le gustaba,
      tan vivaz que casi estoy ahí de nuevo

      aunque no es el vestido ni ella, simplemente
      es el color que me lleva hacia atrás,
      el verde que te quiero verde en este mundo que no
      cesa, mientras vamos pasando
      incesantes, pero siempre

      cambiando, verde que te
      quiero… Y sólo por un momento quiero
      detener su mano y decirle
      que ya no comemos corazón, o no
      en esta casa; no comemos

      hígado, tripas o patas de cerdo hervidas
      a fuego lento, durante horas, para extraer
      sus jugos, pero cuando giro hacia ella
      mi madre ya no está y la silla
      está vacía, como el espacio muerto en el bosque

      cuando talan un árbol, o para ser más preciso,
      la silla en el famoso “lugar vacío” de van Gogh
      que pintó al irse Gauguin, la luz de la lámpara de gas
      azul en la madera pulida y el cabo de la vela, clarísima
      y casi insoportable de tan viva.



Indelible



I should like De Haan to see a study of mine of a lighted candle
and two novels (one yellow, the other pink) lying on an empty chair
(really Gauguin’s chair), a size 30 canvas, in red and green.
I have just been working again today on its pendant, my own empty chair,
a white deal chair with a pipe and a tobacco pouch. In these two studies,
as in others, I have tried for an effect of light by means of clear colour,
probably De Haan would understand exactly what I was trying to get
if you read to him what I have written on the subject.                                 

                                                     Vincent van Gogh. Letter to Theo, 17th January 1889



Forty years dead, my mother is dicing a heart
at the kitchen table.
Rain at the door, but soon it will turn to sleet
and, later, from here to the woods
there will be snow.

In that house, the windows would cloud
in minutes,
and all weekend we could have been alone,
the rest of the town abandoned, as far as we knew,
nothing beyond the garden, no church, no people.

Now she is here, in my kitchen, dicing a heart:
a saucer of salt at her elbow, a handful of flour
sprinkled across the table, the radio on,
she works as she always did, absorbed in her task,
the chef’s-knife catching the light of this winter’s noon.

I have never believed in ghosts, and I’ve no great wish
to see my dead again,
but how could I not respect what refuses to fade,
like the blur in the paint where a hand or a porcelain bowl
conceals the pentimento of a tethered

songbird, or that poppy-coloured stain
emerging, once more,
when we whitewash the scullery wall?
How could the boy in my shoes quite disbelieve
what they told me about

the friend of a friend of a friend
who witnessed a light that nobody could explain,
a lucency over the pond where, decades ago,
the baker’s son fell through the ice, in the paraffin blue
of Hogmanay, when nobody was watching?

I remember us stopping one day, in a sudden fog,
out for a Sunday walk, the trees
a held breath in the sky-wide white of it
and she in that green print dress she loved to wear
so vivid I am almost there again,

but it isn’t the dress, or her, it’s purely
the colour that pulls me back,
the verde que te quiero verde in this world that never
ceases, while we go on passing through
as ceaselessly, though always

changing, verde que te
quiero – and, just for a moment, I want to stay
her hand and say
we never eat heart any more, or not
in this house; we never eat

liver or tripe, or pigs’ trotters simmered for hours
on low heat to draw
the juices – but when I turn to where she was,
my mother is gone and the chair
is empty, like the dead space in a wood

after a tree is felled, or to be more precise,
like the chair in the famous van Gogh, the ‘empty place’
he painted when Gauguin left, the light from the gas lamp
blue on the polished wood and the stem of a candle,
perfectly clear and almost too vivid to bear.
                                      

Et canem meum



Recién cuando me levanto a despedirme
sabés que este perro es mío:

porque se cuida solo, en un rincón,
a menos que lo necesiten,

silencioso, invisible,
como medio dormido,

sombra ligeramente elaborada
entre las sombras

hasta que se levanta rápido
de un solo movimiento,

como un oso que emerge de los árboles
y extrañamente es más que cualquier cosa que hayas visto,

él va conmigo –y yo con él–
y lo que a mí me falta lo lleva en esa gran

cabeza negra, una reserva
llena de sueños

de los que no soy parte, aunque les sigo
el hilo, como el humo de un arma en un claro

o una hueste lejana de voces en lo oscuro, corriendo
hacia nosotros, arriesgando al viento su alegría

como si la tierra misma
estuviera hecha de deseo.



Et Canem meum



It's only when rise to take my leave,
you know this dog is mine:

for he keeps to himself, in the corner,
unless he is needed,

invisible, silent,
seemingly half-asleep,
a slightly elaborate shadow

amongst the shadows,
till, rising to his feet
in one swift move,

The way a bear, emerging from the trees,
is strangely more than anything you know,

He goes along with me - and I with him -
and what I lack, he carries in that great

dark head, a brimming
reservoir of dreams

I am not party to, although I catch
the drift of it, like gunsmoke in a clearing,

or some far host of voices in the dark,
running towards us, changing their joy to the wind,

as if the earth itself
was done with longing

sol en los árboles del seto, un solo
para que se entibie en tus manos
nada que tenga sentido, y sin embargo suficiente
tanto que lamentar, ahora,
casualidad,
y que llegaste a ese estado en el que ser incomprendido
pero no es un don, en absoluto, sino un tesoro que cuidar
hasta volverse un pedacito de calor en una caja de zapatos forrada de musgo,
ya no hay canción que vuelva a ser la misma;
y el zorzal y el petirrojo.

desde Leuk Stadt a Susten:
estaban negras en el enrejado,
densa sobre los muros de piedra que rodean la ciudad,
una mujer se levanta de su cama sin hacer ruido,
que canta porque piensa que está sola
I ON DIGGING A GRAVE FOR OXY, A BLACK TABBY KITTEN, OCTOBER 2016


A fair day, for this time of year/
sun on the hedge trees, a lone /sparrow-hawk over the paddock./ Digging on this
ground is hard, and then it gets harder: /six inches down, I have to go back
for a pick //to prise the larger stones out of the clay;/ and then, with the
blanket-weave shroud laid out in the open, /we finish the job in silence, only/
stopping once or twice/ to estimate the depth and catch our breath. //With
nothing to say, you crumble a fistful of loam/ so it warms in your hands,/ and
sprinkle the grave we've contrived/ with the raw, dark crumbs;/ and, after a
moment, I follow, respecting the silence.//Nothing to say, but far at the back
of my head,/ a voice from an old commercial, calling to mind/ the New Jerusalem
of every song/ my parents made me dance to, pink/ confetti on my shirt, the
latest girl//a chimera of sequins in my arms - nothing that made/any sense, but
just enough/ to contradict the '50s narrative/ of lavender and naphtha in/ her
wedding dress, the hollow of her sleeves //more ghostlike than the bride I never
saw./ So much to grieve for now,/ I can barely keep track:/ sitting up late
with my books, in the anglepoise light,/ heart on a fish-hook, I feed on
whatever I can,//then sleep late, like a latter-day/Neanderthal, the plains/
implicit in my basal ganglia,/ a dustfall in the hall, the noonday sun,/some dolce stil nuovo, of sorts, at the tip
of my tongue.//So much to grieve for - and all of it/ happenstance,/ the curse
of a lifelong vocation for standing my ground/ while all that I once thought
solid frittered away/ like snow on a lit hibachi.
//I see how alike we are, and how unalike;/ and I see you have reached that
condition where misunderstood/ is
also a kind of vocation, the hardscrabble refuge/ you ding to because it is
hard, and because it is yours;//yet I have to accept that you are inclined to
grief:/ by no means a gift, but a treasure that must be/ guarded, like the
heartbeat of a fallen/ songbird, gathered up and carried home/ to safety, till
it dares to fly again.//More often than not, as we know, that presence fades/
to a morsel of warmth in a shoebox lined with moss,/ but once or twice it soars
from your parted/ fingers, soft surrender to the air,/ as it flickers away to
the trees. //From that point on,/ no song will be the same;/ you listen for
yourself, for some thin trace/ of healing in the varied dialects/ of mistle
thrush and robin.//I remember the morning we walked/ from Leuk-Stadt to Susten:/
lost the first quick snow, your brother and I/ and you, running on ahead, to
make/ new footprints on the path between the vines.//Someone had left, or died,
and their grapes/ were black on the trellis,/ shrivelling, now, in the cold,
but still/ so fiercely alive, in their way, an indelible script/ of purpose and
blind resolution inking the wires.//We climbed the icy track at Alte Kehr, the
new snow/ thick on the dry-stone walls around the town,/ and everything, it
seemed, was legible,/ meltwater filling the tracks where a cat had lingered,/
the snow-light on your faces, like a blessing.//In these parts, I've heard it
said that, now and then,/ a woman will leave her bed without a sound/ and go
out early in the morning snow,/leaving no prints as she walks to the end of the
track,/ no vapour on the air, no sound, no stain;//and though she is one of
those we would surely imagine/ as loyal and decent, a careful and loving
mother, we also know/ she has travelled beyond any strong/ attachment to the
place she leaves behind, or those/ who carry on without her://a woman at dusk,
in a white shirt and wine-coloured sandals,/ singing, because she thinks she is
alone,/ or bending to fuss the cat, while the snow-clouds gather,/ and all that
seemed sure stands poised for the darkness to come,/ vineleaves and meltwater,
hedge-blossoms, fish blood and bone.