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Maria Banus |
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Eighteen Wet streets. It has rained drops big as silver coins, gold in the sun. My mind charges the world like a bull. Today I am eighteen. The good rain batters me with crazy thoughts. Look. Drops are warm and slow as when I was in a carriage, pinned tight in diapers, drenched and unchanged for an hour. Yes, it rained as tomorrow, in the past, always. The heart scrapes through time, is one heart. My temples beat stronger than temples of time. Like a common bum I think of drinking life, But I am burnt, even by the hot stream of its juices. I am eighteen. |
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Sssh. I am writing to you because tonight is a night like the brow of a faun, because the roof of my mouth is as bitter as the thin skin of green walnuts, I am writing to you because both of us are so forgetful. I am sure we will forget even the pale flutter of our eyelids soon. Remember. We were walking. Suddenly my tousled hair fell over my face. The wind gusted. Treetops shriveled with dust and reached for each other with a soft rustle. There was acacia. There was also the sea. We had stopped so I could shake sand from my sandals. That is all. Your ankles were dearer to me than heaven and earth. |
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I say to the pencil I say to the pencil come this way, the grass is soft by moonlight, the leaves murmur like pigeons . . . Cursed wretch. It is useless to speak to you. Where are you going? Into gloomy courtyards with scorched grass, toward leaden bandages, among rubble and garbage cans. What are you listening for? There's a death rattle at the back door . . . Come away, I tell you. No one can help them. Good for nothing, do you hear me? |
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