Getting Used to the Light

There’s November in everything, cold
air affixing to tough skin

like curious fingers.
Each evening is a small defeat, a poem

never to be written.
My body started speaking

French. I can hardly understand it,
I can’t catch up with it at all and have no idea

where my words are going.
That’s why I want to start this poem all over,

I want to grab it and do with it
what I do with your body –

but a poem doesn’t always lie before a man
as full and naked as a woman.

Without any sleepiness I sleep
like a shadow under a tree,

the roots intertwining beneath me,
and there, left forgotten on a branch,

an apple. Its persistence is
yellow and senseless.

Here, there is no love – in a poem
a woman can’t be easily exchanged.

The Sun is Shining Above Europe

I’m still walking on damp sand
flat-footedly pressing upon the history

of the sea. Clouds are shedding from my body.
The day already fuller than usual

and the light lets its petals
fall all over your neck.

Previously I saw people carrying
thick bouquets of leeks, big as a meter.

Now the cold is spilling over the city
and outside on the doorknob

hangs a bag with two leeks,
upright and more ordinary in size,

while on the shellfish ever less visible
pearls are forming – towards the end of the year

everything returns to its usual routine.
Neglected thoughts are arching

through me, the city walking on me,
wrapped in a woman’s hair for a scarf.

I’d forgotten everything about this poem.
At times, the hand that softly holds us

suspended in air, shakes us like salt.
Of all the lives I don’t live, this one

is the best.

In The Fray Contributor