Piotr I

The Pond

You enter this room, you leave it,

you wander on through, fall to the depths,

shoot up to the heights, while you speak

what can't be spoken; silently your lips move

as if praying for rain.

It squints at you now with its myriad eyes,

descending the steps one by one, sound by sound,

higher and higher, tripping over its own glance

cast to the ground. “Father, we ask...” you say.

Child, I saw you sitting in the end row,

fresh, angelic, the church pew, your shirt, your hair...

Was it already tomorrow? Will it still be yesterday?

Your book leafed itself through, stroked its own fur

from A to Z, from E to X; a tortoiseshell sat on page 4.

Leaning against a tree, your head – it's you yourself.

Your dream spoke in your ear sitting on your shoulder:

“Get up, my child, run to the woods -

a miracle plant grows there – run to the field!”

I saw you in the bushes by the pond;

lying there long on the warm earth and singing:

“Get up, my child, run to the woods, run to the field..”

The rain emerged, creeping from holes.

Stared down at you as though transfixed,

stared up at itself from within you yourself.

I saw you standing by the house.

Lightning danced one-legged inside.

Your eye so bright at night-time,

your lips, bitten by the moon,

sang: “Get up, my child”.

Piotr II 

(essentia)

You spend your life in expectation,

the days you measure it by, but consider:

just as love knows no end and no beginning,

ever the same, as truly as there is no first love and no last,

as truly as it never leaves us, so death is a joke.

You see yourself stealing around the trees,

hugging them like naked bathers. You see them glow,

burn down to ash and grow towards you,

so you can wait for them.

One small tree the mother, one small tree the father.

Through them you came to be you, whoever you are.

But consider: it can't be you,

for your Lord is with you. Who is he, you wonder.

It is impossible to tell – as you very well know.

Piotr III

(A letter)

A red tsar rode in through the window -

at twilight her smile sweetly fades,

hunched, she writes her son a letter:

Hello Piotr, my dear,

We're well, the spirit's brewed

and the harvest reaped, the dog

ate the priest's book from his hand

as he read psalms over Father.

Now everything's waiting for you:

Father's belt and his stick and the watch

he never wore, for its safety. Come

when you can, Piotr my love.

A squirrel, a flaming branch,

bound the earth to the sky -

he stood at the window, he really was there

and his name was Piotr...

Piotr IV

(The Hat)

This is how it starts: you stop counting the days.

Snowing or not you do not care, for you wander about,

your eyes open closed, and nothing causes you pain

and everything does. Light-footed you step on the tree, its breast

and you drop with a sigh out of the repository of people

you don't know, you doff your cap, a strange one;

the mere fact that it was animate, like its master, moves you. You say:

it walked in the gardens, rose above flowers

rolled down avenues. flew now high now low

beneath the cool vault,

above the dome of the world.

Yes, it rode on a red peal of bells above them all, above you too,

as tears sliced you so thinly

that you no longer knew whether it was snowing

or whether you were merely sad.

Piotr V 

(Sleep)

Before you disappear behind your eyelids,

lose track of yourself inside your own eyes,

the fondest memory flares up: the night

under whose twigs you don't hold your head high

because it trundles you along its shanks, the roads.

At first you gnaw till you've had enough,

bite hard on that which can't be held:

the tender glove of the mist,

the pitch black of sleep – trees' winter fruit.

You watch till it hurts

the face of a woman,

the only one you cannot have -

that angel can only love

the world out there through you.

Piotr VI 

(Tongs)

Who awoke in the frosty night?

Whose shivers approached the open window?

Climbing roses crept bleeding towards him

up the wall of the house in his dream.

Was it you that took the tongs,

mistaking the rustling heads of the flowers

for lumps of coal

to pluck them from the hot embers?

It was not her who smiling

emerged from your mirror and

lay on your breast like tears,

then turned to stone and were gone.

It couldn't have been her

who graciously tore you apart, scattered

you in the valley where you don't dance

in the other's shadow

crashing, rolling into each other,

splintering for all eternity.

Piotr VII

(Leaving)

At last you go outdoors,

go down to the pond

beneath the shady smile

of the sun, (you won't notice it)

the first person to disappear

on the spot where he stood,

in a tear of joy.

You will go, my friend,

like a ray through yourself,

so slowly, so fast,

that time

stands still

before you

and finally

embraces

you

with the body most longed for

that suddenly no longer counts.