Insomnia
Dear monsters, be patient.
It’s sober day. The world is full
of light and sound to its furthest sunlit brink.
I walk among people, on roads as familiar as friends,
grateful, amazed at how I’m free of you,
at how small you seem, how far you are,
like an army’s dull tramp on a distant street
unheard in a quiet house where everyone’s still asleep;
like a glimpse of people in a golden lamplit window,
seen barely, seen by chance
as you cross an unfamiliar alley,
merely silhouettes, but something in the gesture,
in the movement of the shadows,
makes you feel like you should remember who they are.
Patience, dear monsters.
Night comes, and the heart, still sick with an ancient guilt,
the heart, alone and unprotected,
hears your steps. Now they’re closer,
and you’re back. The room melts away.
I sink among you like an inexperienced swimmer.
I’m trampled, twisted,
and you’re so frightening and yet so vague.
Regrets mountain up around me
like giant hounds. You howl invisibly through me,
a numb dumbstruck roaring of the story
of an old, old guilt. The heart weeps like a lost lamb,
a nearly human bleat of fear and woe,
and cries itself to sickly sleep.
The Sun
I’ve learned
the sun is God’s golden mask,
for often, when fury and loathing made my pulse
thud in my skull, the blood
abated its race as I felt God smiling
from behind that mask of splendor.
It can happen, that in a garden richly green
and golden with afternoon light,
I’ll see the sun through the trees,
hanging from a branch like some beautiful fruit.
Once, in such an illuminated hour,
as my mouth fell open in awe,
I could taste its juice.
And once, as day waned into evening,
I saw it setting on the sea like a swan made of flame,
and I rode on its back, pale and tall,
raising a silver trumpet to my lips.
Girls in Crotona Park, the Bronx
Young women have woven themselves
into an early autumn evening,
blending with the landscape
like figures fading in a photograph.
Their eyes are cool,
their smiles thin-lipped and forced,
their clothes are lavender, old-rose and apple-green
and in their veins flows dew;
their words are bright and empty.
Botticelli loved women like these in his dreams.
Mildred Faintly’s complete translation of Lower East Suicide is available from our bookstore here.