JONAS MEKAS POEMS

From "THE TALK OF FLOWERS"

I do not know, whether the sun

accomplished it,

the rain or wind

but I was missing so

the whiteness and the snow.

I listened to the rustling

of spring rain,

washing the reddish buds

of chestnut-trees,

and a tiny spring ran down

into the valley from the hill

and I was missing

the whiteness

and the snow.

And in the yards, and on the slopes

red-cheeked

village maidens

hung up the washings

blown over by the wind

and, leaning,

stared a long while

at the yellow tufts of sallow:

For love is like the wind,

And love is like the water

it warms up with the spring,

and freezes over in the autumn.

But to me, I don't know why,

whether the sun

accomplished it,

the rain or wind

but I was missing so

the whiteness and the snow.

I know the wind

will blow and blow the washings,

and the rain

will wash and wash the chestnut-trees,

but love, which melted with

the snow

will not return.

Deep below the snow sleep

words and feelings:

for today, watching

the dance of rain between the door

the rain of spring!

I saw another:

she walked by in the rain,

and beautiful she was,

and smiled:

For love is like the wind,

and love is like the water

it warms up with the spring

and freezes over in the autumn,

though to me, I don't know why,

whether the sun

accomplished it,

the rain or wind

but I was missing so

the whiteness and the snow.

FROM NOWHERE:

1

I will speak

only

in pronouns,

verbs,

things,

possessive

adjectives,

such as

wide,

blue,

fragrant.

FROM NOWHERE: 2

There is the word,

and music

of the word.

And there are

things,

dreams

and

images.

I pick

one thing,

the

thing itself

is

poetry,

dream

and

reality:

ars

poetica.

FROM NOWHERE: 3

The one

desire I have:

to say

the word

for real,

palpable,

plain,

and speak

straight to the heart

of those

still able

to hear,

way under

the ice.

From "IDILES OF SEMENIŠKIAI"

First Idyll

Old is rain gushing down shrubstems

Old is rain gushing down shrubstems,

cockgrouse drumming in the red summer dawn.

Old is our talk of this.

And of the fields, yellowing barley and oats,

the cowherd fires wetblown in lonesome autumn.

Of the potato digs,

the heavy summer heat,

white winter glare and sleigh-din down unending roads.

Of heavy timber hauls, stony fallows,

the red brick ovens and outlying limerock.

Then by the evening lamps, in autumn, while fields turn gray

of wagonloads ready for tomorrow's market,

the roads, in October, washed out and swamped,

the potato digs drenched.

Old is our life here, long generations

pacing the fields off, wearing down plowland,

each foot of earth able to speak, still breathing of fathers.

Out of these cool stone wells

they drew water for their returning herds,

and when the flooring in the place wore down,

or the housewall quietly started to crumble, they dug their

yellow clay form the same pits,

their sand gold-fresh from the same fields.

And even with us gone

there will be others, sitting out on blue fieldstones,

mowing the overgrown meadows, plowing these plains,

and when they come in at the end of their day and sit down to the tables,

each table, each clay jug,

each beam in the wall will speak,

they'll have the sprawling yellow sandbanks to remember,

and ryefields swaying in the wind,

the sad songs of our women from the far side of a flax field,

and one smell, on first entering a new parlor,

the scent of fresh moss!

Oh, old is the flowering clover,

horses snorting in the summer night,

rollers, harrows and plows scouring tillage,

the heavy millstones rumbling,

and women weeding the rows, their kerchiefs glimmering white.

Old is rain gushing down shrubstems,

cockgrouse drumming in the red summer dawn.

Old is our talk of all this.

Ninth Idyll

Villages and Plains the Streams Flow Through

You too return, along with days gone,

and flow again, my blue rivers,

to carry on the songs of washerwomen,

fishermen's nets and grey wooden bridges.

Clear blue nights, smelling warm,

streams of thin mist off the meadow drift in

with distinct hoof-stomps from a fettered horse.

To carry off rioting spring thaws,

willows torn loose and yellow lily cups,

with children's shrill riots.

The summer heat, its midday simmer:

lillypads crowd, where a riverbed's narrowed,

while mud in the heat smells

of fish and rock-studded shallows.

And even at the peak, when the heat

locked in with no wind appears to shiver and burn,

and barn siding cracks in the sun, even then

this water touches shade, down in the reeds,

so you can feel the pull and crawl,

one cool blue current through your fingers,

and bending over its clear blue flow

make out field smells, shimmering meadows,

other villages passed on the way here,

remote unfamiliar homesteads,

the heavy oakwood tables

heaped with bread, meat, and a soup of cold greens,

the women waiting for the reapers to return.

Fouteenth Idyll

Market days

Mondays, way before dawn,

before even the first hint of blue in the windows,

we'd hear it start, off the road past our place,

over on the highway nearby,

in a clatter of market-bound traffic.

Riding the rigs packed with fruit and crated live fowl,

or on foot, with cattle hitched to tailgates slowing the pace,

or sitting up high, on raised seats

(the women all wore their garish kerchiefs,

the knot under each chin carefully tied)

so jolting along, lurching in their seats,

in and out of woods, fields, scrub barrens,

with dogs out barking from every yard along the way,

in a cloud of dust.

And on, by narrow alleyways,

rattling across the cobbles,

up to the well in the market square.

With a crowd already there,

the wagons pull up by a stone wall

and people wave across to each other,

a bright noisy swarm.

And from there, first tossing our horse a tuft of clover,

father would go to look the livestock over.

Strolling past fruitwagons loaded with apples and pears,

past village women seated on wheelframes

and traders laid out along the base of the well,

he'd make his way to one large fenced-in yard

filled with bleating sheep, with horses and cows,

the air full of dung-stench and neighing,

hen squalls, non-stop bawling,

the farmers squabbling...

And mother, mindful of salt she needed to get,

as well as knitting needles, rushed right off;

and we'd be looking on to help our sister pick her thread,

dizzy from this endless spread of bright burning colors in front of us,

till mother pulled us back from the booths,

had us go past wagonloads of fruit and grain

to skirt the crowding square,

then head up that narrow, dusty side street

to see our aunt Kastūnė;

later, we'd still be talking away, when she hurried us back

past the tiny houses shoved up next to each other, along the river

and down to the mill, where with the last

of the rye-flour sacks stacked up in the wagon

and his shoes flour-white, his whole outfit pale flour-dust,

father would be waiting.

And on past nightfall, farmwagons keep clattering

back past scattered homesteads,

then on through the woods; while up ahead

cowherds perch impatient on top of the gateposts,

their caps pulled down on their eyes,

still waiting for us to get back.

22. Neighbors

Where are you, old Ignotas, coming every autumn,

carrying swingle and hackle -- to thresh rye,

comb the flax or dig potatoes --

where are you, Martynas, in your white linen trousers,

collecting the milk cans every morning,

jingling down the road to the dairy --

through stands of alder, over the fresh growth of red willows,

over clearings, patches of ripe raspberries

overgrown with thistle and switches of meadow rue;

where are you, Kazimieras, then drunk at night,

singing and blundering in the bushes -- and Jokubas,

astride the shining new bicycle,

a flaming dahlia tied to the handlebars --

and the men coming to help mow the hay

or to lug, to pitchfork the manure,

rattling home from the fields in empty carts

whistling in the clearings.

And you in the warm summer nights

gathered in groups, and arms linked

singing high and loudly -- or dancing

in a field staked out with birch saplings and branches

or riding out together to work on roads

or in the fall, to the retting ponds in the bushes

wading in cold water, rolling aside

slippery black stones

and with wide hooks hauling out the flax,

or after a snowfall, on white roads

you plodded into the forest for firewood

carrying saws slung over your shoulders --

hearing how the forest, the entire horizon

echoed the axe blows and how cracking

and breaking down branches, the pines fell,

and sledges loaded with heavy timbers

you moved on wintry roads, over frozen rivers

past the smoke rising from snowed-in homesteads.

Where are you now, my old friends,

the people I grew up with --

and the brushes, the fields, the gravel pits on the hills

-- where are you now, and where are those fields,

where are the retteries, where is the high summer sky,

where is that snow of December?

25. Children

Where are you, fair-haired children of the farms,

when we walked stopping at every ditch,

when we ran to the school -- with small

wooden satchels, with little pen boxes.

By the fields and on roads, on narrow field tracks

and from a distance we saw near the woods

the white of the school house.

Where are you, quite Mykoliukas, waiting

by the road, and you, Maryte, running up the path

from the river. Where are you, Adomelis, where are you all,

when on the snowdrift covered roads,

faces stinging and burning in the cold,

under big winter halts and wrapped

deep in fur coats -- we walked over the white wintry fields,

watching how the wind gusting over the meadows

drove strands of cold dry snow,

how in the very tree tops, perched rigid and still,

the crows kept vigil, how frozen, how stiff

was every branch, the cold willow bushes --

when we, a chattering bunch, walked down frozen rivers,

sliding across puddles, through the brittle

willow brush, chasing and then hanging on to the sledges

of the men driving to the forest --

waving our wooden satchels.

26 WINTER

When the snow blankets the houses, covers te fields,

the pastures, and the river valley and the fish traps --

the cold sets in. And in stinging blows the wind

drives the dry and cold snow across the field.

Having dug a path to the stables, the men haul

water from the snowed-over, ice-encrusted well,

wrapped up in fur coats

and thick woolen mittens,

they drag straw litter in the stable for the cattle

and slide around the frozen icy well,

women with an armful of firewood or a pail of milk

hurry across the yard -- and girls

running out bareheaded,

throw out sweepings on the snow

or a bucketful of clear blue dye.

With only their noses showing from under the caps

wrapped up in fur coats

men chop firewood by the barn --

or inside the barn, behind closed doors propped up with a stick,

they scutch flax, listening to the wind howling outside the walls

and watching how through a gap under the propped up door

it sweeps in handfuls of frozen white snow,

and they listen how up in the rafters,

in the piles of brushwood, and in the eaves of the barn

freezing and covered in snow dust chirp the sparrows.

And then come blizzards, and the wind

rushes day and night across the fields

burying in drifts the gardens, roads and houses,

and the farmers cannot keep up with the digging of paths,

and the cold burns and singes face,

and the wind keeps on blowing across the fields

swirling and driving the snow.

Sitting inside the house, weaving baskets

or making rope tethers for the cattle, the men watch

the women busy weaving at the loom

or the sister with knitting needles --

how fast and quick her fingers move

knitting large colorful flowers;

they talk or listen to the brother

reading aloud from the newspaper

or from a book brought home from school --

about Gulliver tied and tethered by Lilliputians,

about Nonni lost in snowdrifts

or Little Dorrit crying and alone --

outside the window the wind still rages

and blows the snow -- the sweeps creak in the yard.

And the brothers with baskets on their shoulders

and axes in hands walk on the frozen river,

and chop open fishing holes iced up in the night

to shake out on the snow the sparkling jumping fish

and watch how staight, as if to heaven, rises

the smoke of the homesteads, how will stand

the wayside birch trees -- how a solitary

sleigh in haste glides down the road,

how the snow crunches.

FROM "DIENORAŠČIAI 1970 1982"

1.

I sit

drink beer

gaze through the window

it's raining

a man rushes past

with a newspaper

on his head

a woman

a green rain coat

red

intersections

the wet

sidewalk

ripples

I sit

drink beer

gaze through the window

4.

I

wander

and

wander

sad

beneath

streets

of words

waiting

until

someone

takes

me by the hand

and

leads me

home

6.

I pound

on my own door...

on my own door

I pound ...

Heavy stones

lie on my heart, on my memory,

and separate me from myself,

growing always heavier and heavier,

and the roots of words

burn.

(Does the wind wail or do the fields

complain...?)

Have mercy on me, gods.

Gods, solidify my longing,

and shower, shower

the rains of paradise

on memory's roots.

9.

Times were hard.

Now everything

has gone

into the past.

Only the pain

alone

remains

impaled

across

the lake.

P.S:

A detail:

Father shoved up against

a wall.

I lie

with my face to the ground.

White potato

blossoms.

11.

Days pass.

Nothing changes.

In the newspapers

there is a huge political scandal...

Ah, and by the way

they've scrambled up onto the moon!

Only my life

remains boring, monotonous,

and papers lie scattered

across my desk ...

I feel empty and guilty;

in my heart

there is confusion.

Outside it begins to rain.

So I throw on a jacket,

and like one of Schiller's romantics,

a touch angry,

a touch melancholy

slowly lifting one foot

after the other

I walk the wet, crowded streets,

drowning inside myself.

41.

Lush

tree tops

rush past ...

Verdant ...

Civilization's

death throes

quiver

in the wounded

nuclear power plant

air.

71.

So Onute, you say you don't remember (maybe

just in a dream the colors, the scents, the sounds

are wrong) you don't remember

how the wind fondled your blond wisps of hair

through the open car window

Vilnius Montefiascone

you don't remember

we stood on the shores of Lake Bolsan

in the gold of the sunset

just a pair of friends oh!

the silence! such peace

ah, paradise is not yet

entirely lost, no

we said, joking,

and emotion bobbed in the water

blown by ecstasy's sails.

We stood

and evening's arms

stroked a circle around us

and your hair.

76.

Damp, cold,

and like on the Western Front

Nothing has Changed.

I walk along and I think to myself

In Lithuanian

damp

Sunday

the squidgy corner

of a newspaper red,

reflections of light

a sidewalk,

America.

Have you ever walked alone

like this

on the streets of a foreign city,

knowing

that you are alone

with your wet,

Autumn

raincoat

alone, all alone

with your

Lithuanian words?

Autumn a wet sidewalk

wind damp

on the Western Front

Nothing has Changed.

8.

My head sags

from prowling

to salvage

scraps

of my days.

This morning, it snowed.

Now, it's raining.

In a wheezing

voice,

the preacher

curses

his city.

Head

hits

night's

down.

28.

I learned my geography

from war

maps.

Human anatomy

I came to grasp

from

accounts of

concentration camps.

47.

The Dachau trails

it's raining

on

thirty years

later

wet

underfoot

nameless

gravel.

48.

Sing in

calm

I no longer can.

In deep

anguish

I cant write down

I follow

the death

of my own

irresponsible

generation.

52.

late at night

drinking wine

think of friends

late at night

late city night

outside the window

words stack up

late at night

late at night

think of friends

drinking wine

late at night

heart sore and how

memory quakes

this late a night

the wine I drink

53.

O when we stomped

we stomped, tracking the flax

for tears.

O when we dug

we dug

canals

digging down deep

not enough to keep

bones of our pals.

57.

What went unrecorded, I

Adam,

do now

attest.

How the sadness

lags my heart!

For no sooner had we made

one day's journey by road, when

at the limits of pain and thirst, stretched

to recover in the shade of a heated boulder,

unconvinced as yet our fate had real edge,

we saw the vast hub of paradise

split up in an innumerable mess of fragments

then come pouring, raining down,

on the skyline

and on my soul.

68.

fruit

bread

milk

death

life

this month

dropped

one half

percent

you pay

more for

everything

nothing for

nothing

night on

cold

concrete

* * *

I don't know, whether it was

the sun had done it,

the rain or wind,

but I really missed

both snow and whiteness.

While listening to showers

rinsing the pink

fresh chestnut buds,

and the high brook running

downhill in rivulets,

I missed the snow

and whiteness.

Now while the yards

fill out with sound,

the red-cheeked

farmgirls string their wash

out in the wind,

then leaning back

stand there to watch

fresh yellow willow banks.

For love is like the wind,

and love is like water:

turning warm in spring,

freezing over in autumn.

But I, I don't know why,

whether the sun

had done it,

the rain or wind,

I really missed both

snow and whiteness.

This wet wind blows the wash

will blow again, I know;

just as the same old rain

rains in the chestnuts now.

Though love the snow took off with

will not be back,

asleep in deep snow

as words and heart are;

I watched it rain just now,

the first spring rain

dancing, at my open door!

Someone I never noticed before

went by in the downpour;

looking just lovely, she

even smiled at me.

So love is like the wind,

and like water too,

turning warm in spring,

freezing over in autumn,

and yet I still don't know

why: whether it was the sun,

the rain or wind

had done it,

I really miss both

snow and whiteness.

Update (2003)

Winter, don't ever be over. So that Spring

never has to show up, and no armies can

come marching in on us, while they're still waiting for Spring. Wild

forest creatures will stay calm asleep, dreaming of

utopia.

Winter, don't ever be over. All will stay shut in

at home, sleeping all the while, with the vile evildoers, tramps

and wheeler dealers all frozen stiff, all will be drinking

with prostitutes, like children in their innocence

until the Spring,

which is never to come.

Don't show up, Spring. Keep all your

blossoms, smells, kisses and crusts --

I want to stay calmly drinking my wine

with old friends -- while it's still winter,

while the armies haven't marched in yet --

O snow, keep on snowing, as deep, impenetrable,

cold, as in the winter of 1812,

until it's Spring,

that's never to come.

It was already summer, when we left Flensburg.

Sailboats filled the bay, and

out on the shoreline piers, over open water and the fishing boats

there was a shimmer of heat.

And once we'd made our way

out to Gluecksburg,

the children there were noisily splashing

in a thick-grown forest of reeds.

We felt the pull of distance.

War was just over, with its last

shells, its last bomb blasts

still echoing off the slopes. Past stations in rubble,

and gutted, charred little towns,

we kept moving on, pushing our way in

among women and children,

war prisoners and miserable soldiers

squatted down in muggy heat, slumped together

with the swarms of refugees

on grimy floors, with hunger and thirst

to stretch our hands out toward any well

or cup of water,

and snatch up tiny, under-ripe green apples

gritty and battered off railroad embankments,

or out of ditches below the tracks.

So, slowly, we pushed on that summer, laying in

at every train stop, beside each bridge,

trudging down blackened knolls and

out along narrow fieldpaths,

spending the nights on burned-out platforms

and charred tracks.

You remember. That time we were in Hanover,

sprawled out where the station had burned to the ground,

looking up at the bright nightsky that June,

hearing those heavy wornout ravings,

freightyard hoisting-cranes, the wrenching

sad city noises filled with uncertain steps,

with death and grief:

staring at a pale moonlit night

that felt so worn out, worked over, scorched

and shattered from what not long before had been the proud

the core and center of Europe.

With eyelids dropping, the feeling gone

from each nerve-end, we kept on pushing south that summer

through heavy rumblings, beyond exhaustion,

and each town, each horizon,

each trainstop along the way

gave off a lingering stench of death and smoke,

now with brokendown, burned-out tanks and fortified trenches,

highways blown up

and bomb craters midfield – deep hollows

staring back black death –

the only scrawny vague

surviving witnesses

under the first flowers of spring.

On and on we kept pushing

through towns in rubble, past wrecked horizons

with villages razed, acres of cannon and truck,

whole graveyards of steel,

and squads of an occupying army,

their painted guardrails around town squares glaring white.

So we pushed on

and saw people starved down to nothing

come out from under the broken brickwork, in clusters

up from the dust, in vivid stripes of concentration-camp inmates,

death-like, their hands shrunk to nothing,

the women and children surfacing in swarms.

And the war prisoners. Ringed in by shabby, grimy barracks

they sang in a pale haze under the sun, played cards

while waiting for the last trucks, freedom

bound, to take them home.

There was one young German soldier, still a child,

all of a child standing there

inside the burned-out Hanau station, staring at

the heaped up brick and stone, the skeletal steel,

treetrunk, smokestack and dirt charred the same overall black,

windows wrenched out of their frames, a meshwork

of iron and steel sagging down –

his childhood in shreds, all that was left of it.

Tears ran like water down his face,

just like water.

We had crossed salt-marshes up north, desolate fields,

black Ruhr Valley skylines,

to push farther south, through dense

midGerman towns. So that

now it was August, maybe only

the end of July – time went and faded out –

we found ourselves in Würzburg.

It was still morning, yet the air

flared a real summer flame.

All tired out, we stood on a platform

and stared at the stubs of masonry left,

the rolling hills, the gold

summer shimmer:

and felt this sudden urge

to go out in the fields!

It was the pull of summer, the burning Bavarian sky

and sunlight –

and taking what was left of our memories with us,

our pitifew packings for the trip (the towel

mother made us take, a scarf from our sister,

some snapshots now faded), we were

suddenly high up inside the orchards.

Now here we were months later, after all that death,

eyeing orchard slopes, trees,

and villas that hugged the hillsides,

not believing any of it yet,

still full of the road we'd gone, the swarm

of pounding noises.

And yet these apples, ripe and full, were not the charred

green apples from the railroad tracks.

This was Bavaria we were in.

Look, my brother was saying: how green

the fields and trees all around!

As we climbed on up to the top of the orchards

and walked the fields

half crazed, drinking in the smell of wild roses,

the shade of the orchards.

This was life reviving, in every

apple bough and vineslope.

And the people,

the grown girls, women in gaudy summer kerchiefs,

with wicker baskets full, ripe as orchards

alongside the men, making their way down into town.

Dizzy with summer blossoming,

all that vitality, that vineland fragrance,

we sat there on a hillside, looking down

the deep track the stream of the Neckar had carved, and out

past the ruins of Würzburg, reflecting

on the years of suffering, death and despair,

and marveled at the life coming back – each sign we saw of it –

and the earth's strength.

II

Under a burning Australian sky

lies my Regina's grave. Burned by the sun,

with hot sands and cool nights like hands

caressing, keeping it safe.

Sleep, and go on sleeping, under your skyblue eyes; not that

I'll get to see them again, any more than they'll ever see

our faraway childhood sky.

Still, I do keep them like two

tiny dew-beaded pearls.

That time we went together, one last time

across a flower-crested field, scanning

the hillsides for approaching rain,

then stopped in the doorway to a bokendown old house

and watched a bright green, rain-

washed field,

shiny with beads of rain, and listened

to the thunder rumbling, the rain hissing in

over the hills.

Your eyes of rain-washed field,

two beads of rain.

Maybe I really

should not have taken your hand that time.

Maybe not, after all. Hands join like roots,

and not just to uncover lives.

Sleep, under the wide span of a silk horizon,

and go on listening to that strange balmy wind

gusting in through forests, level sands and laketops,

all that way across briny high seas

and faraway islands --

still listening for that faraway echo of childhood,

the one voice your friends had in common --

while I keep on going, growing more and more remote.

And where, with your eyes open wide, so clear and child-like,

are you now, Marcele -- left behind as you were

in some small nameless town in central Germany --

and you, Vladas?

The time I met you two, that spring,

sunk in the teeming green at Wilhelmshöhe,

guiding each other along past the falls

on your way down a gushing hillside in spring,

watching the high water, branches on trees,

you held hands all the while.

And it never crossed my mind, not once,

not even the time a whole bunch of us went singing

through flowering midsummer fields,

along the pale Wiesbaden streets --

I never once even happened to think...

the gray Hessen sky,

all the pale little towns, would stay so entranced, listening

for the approaching laughter, those sweet

friendships...

that it was all one woven into you all beauty

and love and suffering sleep little one sleep

while I keep going on to make my rounds complete

III

Again I see that powerful broad stream, one non-

stop shimmer of colors

It was summer, that last time, I saw you

awash in sunlight, with bright rowboats

crawling slowly, singing and playing, past the islands,

bridges, castles hugging the slopes,

and everything shining back sunlit.

Now it's September, showing other colors.

The islands transparent, with leaves washed far out to sea,

cold foam breaks from the slow-plowing

dark tugboats,

their black shingled cabins spattered with rain,

smoke trailing into a cold, black streak

overhead.

With you the same old Rhine as ever, the wine

makes men sing up and down both shores, still the same

with long-haul sailors yelling down at grimy

toyboats, your birds

the same white hens perched on wooden

bridge-posts.

No matter that the bridges gave out

under the crush of marching feet, or that the city chimneys

turned solitary rigid scarecrows,

you stay the same, as dark, as powerful,

carrying timber and white blood.

Without our gazing at the Rhine that summer,

or crossing the bridge at Mainz, or letting ourselves go

in a fragrance of sunlight and roses down those vineslopes,

or making the Mainz-Kastel run on that tiny little train

with the basketloads of cherries and apples, white grapes

and yellow gold apricots;

somehow, without our being there, there'd be no trace of either

that summer or those days.

Still it is strange how happy a summer that one was for us.

Even its bleak phases, for all our standing around with food parcels

or soup tins, had a shining

off the slopes and orchards and townships;

even while hanging out wash in the yards, or scanning

bulletins for the names of lost ones,

or grimly pacing the small squares

to track down each scrap of fresh news,

we kept a child's feeling for white Wiesbaden.

In going off to sit out a spell on some sun-drenched slope,

or down the banks to the Rhine to watch

the barges, down in that deep-carved track,

plod by under full loads of coal and timber

along the floodlit banks,

vinyards, bridges in rubble under water,

with the last war blasts

echoing off the slopes.

Even while sitting in some low, cool beerhall off the marketplace,

scanning notices posted on walls, taking the cool summer air

with a pale green Rhine wine -- hearing the farmhorses

and girls in clogs clop by over the cobbles

down narrow alleyways -- all the while drinking in

a chestnut-and-apple smell.

IV

Early that fall, midSeptember already,

with the rains just starting, we left Wiesbaden.

Mud was waiting for us, when we got to Kassel,

along with the white-washed wooden barracks, that autumn.

Trudging cold water, while the wind and rain

blew right through us,

we patched cracks in the barrack walls,

gathered up rain-soaked alder sticks,

and talked cold weather, mud,

on-coming winter.

And it was not much later

the snow arrived,

fuming in over the Wilhelmshohe ridges and treelines.

Yet winter, even that one, passed;

soon it was summer, then one more fall

coming on, as we watched the woods go under, out on the slopes,

while we stood by the trolleys,

or with our skimpy pouches

waited in long lines for bread,

milk and vegetables,

or tugged at carts the coal and alder-logs

loaded down.

Past thrashing and screeching from a pond inside our compound,

where children splashed unsettled black water on each other,

we'd stroll the schoolhouse path

hand in hand, in pairs or clusters,

and passing the commissary along the way we'd hear

strokes from constant, on-going ping-pong inside,

the voices of Sipas and Tony,

old records, an accordion wheezing.

Sundays, we'd go roam the fields,

or just stand around, down by the gameyard,

to watch the men tossing a basketball

get worked up over each point,

or sit back inside our low-slung shed of a moviehall

to watch some cheap slapstick, and then

pour out shouting, the whole slew of us

flooding one hillside,

while down below in the Yugoslav hall

harmonicas played and the dancing went on, with

frog-croaks drifting above the fields and on through

gardens where people wandered the hedgerows and bushes

as solitary dreamers

to look off toward a blazing shimmer of lights

in faraway Kassel and hear

the trains go pounding by,

until one day, toward spring, the departures started.

Saying our good-byes, kissing each other

as old friends down the years, having shared the long haul,

one room, one fate,

we carried out our pitiful belongings,

our bits and relics,

and climbed up into the trucks to look back

from under the canvas top at friends who were to stay behind,

eyeing their small cluster,

the few faces there, people standing

lined up by the edge of the lot, already starting to fade back:

and listened for the last time

to the noises of the compound, and looked at the barracks,

that cloud of dust off the road a last cover

hanging back there, obscuring the years,

the friends and the past, our shared memories:

looked out from under the canvas,

eyes steady, fixed on the road.

I. Images

1.

Someone

stands

where he

waded in,

midstream.

Nothing

seems

to be

bothering

him,

standing

there

calm,

stock

still,

to watch

the

float

bobbing,

fog

drifting.

2.

Once

again,

it's

raining.

I

lie

here

and

listen

to

rain

drops

breaking

on the

yard

as

though

raining

into

the soul

itself.

3.

The man

sitting

deep in

orchard

shade

is

watching

appletrees

the heat

struck

sky

all

trembling

linden.

4.

It's just

this image

just this

river

-willow

a bird

swings

just this

burning

sun

in the lips

of a stream

just this.

5.

Motion

-less

skiffs

burn

in a pale

noonday

sun.

Where

I

sit

there's

no

breeze,

no

sound,

except

for a

power

-boat

from

across

the

bay.

6.

Someone

sitting

on

shore

watches

the sun

being

reflect

-ted,

the

grass

shifting,

then

lifts

his

eyes

back

up.

II. In the Woods

1.

I

too,

now

halfway

through

my life,

entered

a

dark

woods,

lost

track,

saw

no

more

signs,

and

now

have

to

start

all

over

again,

and

all

I thought,

I thought

was

my

real

self,

drops

off

just

now,

so

I

stand

stripped

down

to

basic

first

things,

asking

where

I

am

and

what

I am,

straining

to

hear

some

-thing

in the

silence,

hearing

bound

-less

void

inside

things,

seeing

the

past

keep

falling

back,

feeling

that

with

each

new

word,

urge,

sense

that

I am,

I am

back

at my

source,

with

all

my

gain

and

loss,

sheer

night

all

around

me

now

I

stand

here

alone.

2.

I

look for

new

forms

which

would

let me,

let me

disclose

the whole

memory

of my

experience.

Aimlessly

pacing,

going

this

way

and

that,

just

to keep

coming

back,

while

everything

inside,

breaking

and

raging,

raging

to escape,

stays

locked up,

un

-told.

Life's

abs

-cess!

Was

all

I drummed

myself

up

for,

for nothing,

nothing at all,

going

deeper,

deeper

in,

going

in

ever

widening

circles,

in

-scribing,

scribing

ever

larger

circles

inside,

trying

and

trying,

again

and

again,

to reach,

reach for

the untold

sense and

purpose

to

my

existence,

asking

and

asking,

starting

again

to listen

in on

silence

itself,

ignoring

the fact

that

silence

never

speaks,

or

the fact

there's

nothing

to follow

the

question,

that

the

answer

to

every

question

is

still

only

silence,

not believing

in

silence,

I go

on,

to no end

touching,

touching

and

rubbing up

to

things:

their

cold

stare

comes

piercing

through

and

stays here,

stays in,

im

-pene

-trable,

dumb,

to corroborate

all there is.

3.

So

I'm

back,

back

to

trying,

trying to

wrench the

mystery

out

from

the core

of myself,

trapped

inside

an un

-breach

-able

isolation,

stray

-ing

deeper

and

deep

-er

in.

In

rock

I

found

my

source

solid

stiff,

waiting.

At times,

it seems

I'm

so

close,

close

to

things,

I tremble

to set

foot on

the earth.

All you

people

I've

seen

no

more

into

than

into

things -

seeing

you

merely

as

move

-ment,

po

-etry --

just as

a rain

-drop

will

spill from

a brim

-ming

cloud,

not

of

its own

force,

or

heat,

yet

in

-sep

-erable

from

both.

Just

what

makes

you

so

different,

or better,

more in

-depen

-dent,

or

free,

and

what

from?

No

-thing

I

can

say.

From the

brink of

dreams,

I

look

into

the rain

as

into

my

-self,

my eyes

fix

on

things

and

so

merge

with

things

I look

at

as

at

myself,

just as

remote

from both --

so

the fault

right there

is

my own

fault.

My own

wretched

head.

4.

O

friends,

I was

aching

to tear,

tear out

some

bit

of

the

truth

from

inside

myself,

or of

beauty,

fingers

grop

-ing

blind

in a

thicket

all emotion.

For

all

the

many

times

I tried

to get

clear,

I

just

strayed

deeper

in.

Silence

is all

there now

appears

to be,

as I

look out

from

inside,

an artic

music

of the spheres

the only

sound

agrippa

von

nettes

-heim

the

time

-lines

runn off

and

merge.

O

my friends,

I

didn't follow

your

fate,

nor

you

mine,

and

I

don't know

where

we are

now,

what

distance

or

nearness

we

share,

if it's

language

of matter

or

of spirit

we

speak --

the con

-spiracy

of things

I'm

trying

to

break

free of --

my

heart's

own

impul

-ses

drive

me

to

disrupt

my

rhythms

and

constantly

confine me

to

the heart

of space,

without

reprieve.

5.

O

Europe,

like a

child,

you

still

have

a gleaming

past.

Though

you

shattered

my childhood --

so I

still

carry

my

rui

-ins,

even now,

sorting

and

patching,

trying to

pick

out

some

sense of

unity,

or

conti

-nuity.

And

it

was

you

turned

and

burned

me

into

a

stray

scrap,

with no

place to

fit in,

fall

-ing

and

fall

-ing.

6.

To

-day

it

all

fell apart,

nothing

makes

sense,

it's

things

I'm alone

with.

No more,

to

aim for,

except this

desire

thirsting

under

a heavy

sky.

And

second

now,

I might

break

apart.

Alone,

I sit

staring

out

the window.

In

daytime,

street

noises

are like

a knife.

I don't

know how

I hold

out, with

-out

shatter

-ing,

col

-lap

-sing --

Looking

at

my

hand,

the

veins

twisting --

un

-able

to

solve

life's

rid-

-dling

si

-lence,

I sink

deeper

in.

7.

To

-day,

I'm

all

alone,

all

by

myself,

trying

to grasp

every

-thing

over

again,

fresh

from

the

first,

out of

nothing --

pre

-positions,

pro-

positions,

words,

things --

start

out

word

by word,

thought

by thought,

act

by act,

and try

to build

myself

up

by leaving

everything

open,

with no

assumed

direc

-tion --

all on

intu

-ition,

letting

improvi

-sation

guide me,

a

-voiding

the

paved

roads

(I know

where

they

lead

to,

Eu

-rope!)

or any

straight

lines --

even

to

going

around

dis

-oriented,

in

no

hurry,

with

no

place

to go,

no

more

to

look at

either,

so

to

go

this

way

or

that,

to

no

purpose,

and

listen

in

on

each

and

every

new

er

-eratic

heart

-beat,

non

-sense

soun

-ding

new

word,

soul

shim

-mer,

try to

start

prying

the

truth

open

again --

not

by

questioning,

or

responding,

but

by a given

grace;

leaving

logic

and

reason

behind.

(I

know

that

logic

and

reason

of

yours,

Eu

-rope!)

So

I go

more

by

instinct

than

insight --

groping

-ly,

strain

-ing

to

hear,

going

by

touch,

as

often

getting

lost,

fin

-gering

tracks

that

cen

-tur

-ies

im

-bed

-ded.

There

are

times

I'll

feel

a breeze

fresh

on my

fingers

or

eyes --

or

less

often,

drops

of

light,

spray

-ing

sparks,

briefly

throw

light

on

the

horizon --

then go

all

dark

again --

8.

I

keep

going

in

circles.

Grasp

-ing

none

of

it,

while

the

latest

words

and

images

drift

out

of

reach,

ir

-retrievable.

Darkness

encloses

me

on

all

sides.

I'm

standing at

the last

stop

there

is.

It's

here

the

fo

-rests,

vast

deserts

start,

dark

-ness

and

silence

alone

wait

for

me.

Old Is The Hush of Rain

Old is the hush of rain over the branches of underbrush; and the hoarse cries of the black cocks are old in the red summer dawn

— old, this our speech:

of yellow fields of oats and barley, of shepherds' campfires in the blown wet loneliness of autumn,

of the potato harvests, of the summer heats, of winter's white glint, creak and hiss of sleighs

— of wagons log-laden, of stones in fallow fields, of red brick stoves, of gypsum in the pastures

— and then at lamplit evening, as the autumnal fields go gray,

of wagons for tomorrow's market, of drowned October highways washed away

— days of the potato harvest.

Old, this our life — interminable generations

that walked over the fields

and traced their steps over the black earth

— each foot of land still speaks and breathes the fathers. For from these cool stone wells

they watered their evening herds,

and when the clay floors of their cottages wore out

and the walls crumbled slowly,

from these fields they dug up the yellow sand,

from these pits, yellow clay.

And when we too depart, others will rest on the same boundary-stones, scythe down the same lush meadows, plough these fields. And as they sit beside the tables, after work, each table, each clay pitcher, each beam in the wall will speak. They will remember wide gravel-pits of yellow sand, and in wind-ruffled fields of rye the voices of our women singing from the flaxen edges

— and this first scent in a new cottage: fresh fragrance of moss!

Old is the hush of rain over the branches the horses whinnying in the summer nights, the chirp and chime of harrows, rollers, ploughs, grindstones of the mills, the green smells from the meadow, steeping flax, white gleam of kerchief of the weeders in the gardens.

Old is the hush of rain over the banches of underbrush; and the hoarse cries of the black cocks are old in the red summer dawn

— old, this our speech.

From Letters

In Praise of Heat

Ah, the summers of

New York!

Adrenalin of 95 degrees! 100!

Happy I walk the streets of New

World, panicking about the next

bill, on top of all the others --

banks, Ft.Lee, and the Fluxus artists

of last October, still not paid --

I don't open Jackson Mac Low's

letters --

ah, I need it all, it drives me mad

and keeps me going, these debts and these

constant emergencies, threatenings,

each worse than the other,

since... since winter 1953 on

Avenue A, Gallery East -- not far from where

I met Lilly --

no, I didn't move far away, my friends,

not far at all --

and, I tell you, you get used to it all

and it's just another heat, another

day and 95 degrees and then maybe

goes up to 100 and everything seems to

about to crash or, say, melt, and Robert,

even Robert seems to lose his cool -- I wish

he'd eat some chocolate, but he's forbidden to do

so -- so we write some desperate irrational

letters and sit on phones and,

I tell you, it's very very hot and

we sleep horribly and sweat -- it goes up to

105 and more, maybe 120.

Ah, no end to our summer heat, but that's

adrenalin we need to live, it's our way

of living, it seems, and if, imagine!

suddenly everything would get normal and

cool and suddenly no angry calls

and threats to turn off electricity

and phones, and close the Ft.Lee vault,

and Nat West, three months behind

by now in payments -- and what's her

name, calling for her $75 from four

years ago --

the heat would drop to maybe 70

and we'd look around and listen in disgust:

ah, how normal, disgustingly, and how like

everybody else's

our lives have become, with no

threats and no crashes and no emergencies

and no crazy woman coming to our door about

the street lamps with no bulbs because we have

no three dollars to buy them --.

Ah! I like this heat! I think it's

reaching one hundred, it's going up,

I am all excited -- the rats are leaving the

ship -- they think it will sink -- Ah, you

little ratties, you don't know we are the

super rats, Jack knew it! -- and no hurricane

no heat will sink us!

It's in our blood, the disasters, shipwrecks and

supper heats & constant sinkings -- it's

our very nature! So let's go to Sophie,

Julius, let's have a beer -- later

we'll stop at Max Fish, to see Gloria

who just shaved her head & put her hair in

a jar of formaldehyde, in a Gallery --

Ludlow street, just a door from Gallery

East, anno 1953 --

she serves us beer for free, and we'll

play pool, maybe --

"It hits you like a hot hair dryer, this heat,"

said Raimund. "This is what Peter said,"

he continued, as we were driving

in his happy jeep through the 110 degrees

of New York evening. "He said 'when

the lemmings are marching towards their mass

suicide, the avantgarde stays

in the back,' "

and we laughed. Ah, Peter, we wish you'd be

here with us this evening and

P.Adams, and Gozo, Istvan, Giuseppe,

Hermann, and DoDo Jin Ming --

So be calm, be calm, dear friends, be calm

in the very eye of

storm: we do not budge, we enjoy the sweat,

we like the scorching heat, we like

when it hits 100 and

more --

go, heat, go go go, rise up and up and

up -- we are the junkies of the constant

heat! we are the Super Rats of

cinema --

go up, heat,

go!

A Requiem for the XXth Century

Millennium ended fifteen minutes

ago,

I watched it all on TV.

Fiji, New Zealand, Tokyo, Moscow,

Paris, etc.

It happened as I was splicing

my film, it fell between the splices,

so to speak. Between the splices of a film

entitled As I Was Moving Ahead

Occasionally I Saw Brief Glimpses

Of Beauty.

Wiener Waltz is playing on radio,

a minute ago was the

Ninth Symphony.

Now I am typing and thinking of

you, my dear friends,

in Tokyo, Paris, Hamburg, Vilnius, São

Paolo, Madrid and many other cities

and towns and villages, some of them

nameless.

Ah, Peter and Hermann, I almost forgot

Vienna! That will cost me a bottle of

Veltliner.

The radio guy is yapping now about all the

great events of the century.

But I still have to hear about Apollinaire

and Vallejo and Buñuel and Trakl, Huidobro,

Cocteau, Yessenin, Isidore Isou,

Gertrude Stein, and the donkeys of

Avila, and Julius and Auguste, and my

childhood river Roveja, and Maxi,

Anthology's cat, and the names of all

the women I loved, and anything that

really matters and formed the mind & essence

of my century.

But I don't really care this way or

that, because Harry Smith, who still lives

at Anthology /he was heard doing research

in the Library last night/ -- he told me

that everything remains in the stars

eternally,

and Harry knew it, Agrippa von Nettesheim

knew it too, & so knew Giordano Bruno &

Giuseppe Zevola & Barbara Rubin &

especially, I am sure of that,

Storm De Hirsch.

So it's all here now and

tomorrow, the poets and things that really

matter, like friendship, love,

angels, fluttering of butterfly wings

in China, and things

like that, and I would include the poetry of

Jackson McLow, Basho and, absolutely,

potato pancakes, the kind I make, the kind

my mother taught me to make / no onions,

please! /.

So I celebrate it all now, late this

night, exactly thirty minutes into the

Third Millennium, and I drink to you all --

and ah, to Robert Kelly and Tuli Kupferberg too --

as we move ahead... Dear Gozo, it's all

a big joke on us, anyways, invented

by some Zen lunatic or

Taylor Mead.

NEXT DAY

we sat at Dempsey's /we didn't feel like

going to the Mars Bar somehow/

Audrius and Auguste, drinking our Irish amber

beer. "I saw the morning come," said

Auguste, "and it was a very clear &

beautiful morning, so it's a good sign

for the Millennium."

So we drank to that. Then Auguste said, "Ah,

remember how they gave us

all that stuff, in madhouse, the Russians,

and I used to push it under my tongue

and later spit it out."

"I did the same," said Audrius.

This was a conversation absolutely not like in

Pan Tadeusz by Adam Mickiewicz, but I thought

it summed up for me the

Twentieth Century, I mean, the one that people

are talking about & celebrating,

not mine.

Ah, how many pills, injections did your body

take, dear Auguste,

how many injections were forced upon you,

it's amazing you still play music and sing

and paint and are alive.

EARLIER that day

we sat around the Round Table, at

Anthology. We waited for Masha, but she

called in, was sick. She had planned to bring

some Russian herring & cabbage &

stuff.

So we had some wine instead.

How come, we wondered, with all the haloobaloo,

Y2K and everything, how come there was no mention

of the Person responsible for it all!

So we drank to Jesus Christ. Auguste

drank red Rhone wine, I drank cheap

Vino Verde because I am all in

Spain, these days, I think I am half

Spanish.

Ah, my friends!

We all had some great times occasionally.

Red, blue, and yellow & orange

times. Not everything was that black,

you have to

admit.

We all saw some glimpses of beauty &

happiness as we moved ahead, even in

stagnation,

as we moved ahead through the horrors of

the Twentieth Century -- did you see the picture

of the mother carrying a child, in

Sarajevo, or was it in some other

bloody place, blood running over the

child's face, the picture was in

color. Ah, ah, what a way to begin

life! Twentieth Century, I hope it will never come back,

not even in bad dreams, I hope it will be

swallowed by some deep hole and spat out

into Dante's circle number

Nine.

Scars are on our bodies, minds,

souls even,

some of us do not always sleep well

all night -- I don't -- sometimes we still

jump up, not knowing why, as horrors

linger.

But I embrace you, the new Millennium, full of

hope, fool's hope, trustingly,

still believing in miracles, Santa Teresa de

Avila & St.Francis, little birds & bugs

& I cried for the broken trees of Versailles,

I still believe in all things unimportant &

useless for my contemporaries

as I move ahead,

as we all do,

all alone in our essential,

binding loneliness, still believing in

Paradise,

very very invisible but transparently

shining and

inevitable.

It's late at night.

I can not sleep. It's

three in the morning. I keep writing.

What else can I do. What else

can I do. What else can I

do.

Even the flesh is not

burning.

Eyes, and where are the

eyes. I want to see the

eyes.

Tell me, tell me -- and do not

turn away.

I want to look into them. But I do not

dare, from fear what's in

them --

as I keep moving ahead,

ahead.

End of Year Letter to Friends

11:30 at night this 23rd of December. Tomorrow my

birthday.

Message from Stan, on phone. Cancer is "terminal."

That's what they call it.

"They quit, gave up. Cancer too spread. Doctors won't

operate."

Message from Fred Camper: Stan broke, no money to pay

doctors, hospitals.

Walked to Anthology. Snowing lightly.

Paul Morrissey came. Legstiff, arthritis... Hopped

up & down the stairs, on one leg, in a funny

way.

What else is bad?

Eight Palestinians killed... Small type,

page sixteen.

Last night we stayed till 1:00, Anthology's

Christmas party.

Now it's late. The day gone by. Pip, Julius,

Fabiano, drinking at Dempsey's, reviewing the

year. Not thinking about the horrors,

trying to be positive. But I am very skeptical

about it all, the world is so bad, I mean, the

people, the whites, the jews, the muslims, africans,

mexicans, russians -- all bad bad

bad.

I am innocent, I said last night. I only hurt some small

animals, as a child. But I have asked their forgiveness

so many times now, so many times, I've even cried

remembering what I did to baby crows, frogs.

I think they have forgiven me.

So I am innocent, I don't think I have done any real

bad thing in my mature grown-up life,

I really feel so.

I don't even know how to get angry, or shout,

it always shocked me, it shocks me when I hear high angry

voices.

No no no, I don't understand any of it,

no, I don't, I don't.

But tomorrow is my birthday and I should feel

more grown up, especially at my age, I should know more

about the real ways of this world.

But I don't.

The world passed me by, I missed it, I only heard

noise and I saw blood in newspapers and salesmen on TV

selling things I have no use for.

I only own two pairs of pants, some shirts, ran out of

socks last week.

So where am I? The ultimate failure, according to the

statistics and evaluations of real life authorities

in Terra anno 2002 -- just before my birthday,

which is tomorrow /same as Joseph Cornell's and Louise

Bourgeois -- Happy B'Day, Joseph, and Chère

Louise/.

NEXT DAY:

We all had a lot of music and dance and wine at

Anthology, and the Indians, the Uta Nation came and blessed

the avantegarde, they never did that for

Hollywood. And the Bear Boy sang a Uta Nation song in

our honor. And the snow was still falling

outside.

DAY AFTER:

Espresso with Raimund. More bad news. Robert

just moved out of his Bleecker Street place, his leg

hurts too much, can not be operated, heart too weak,

moved into a room with an elevator, now looking at

New York through a twentieth floor window,

a great view, he said /supposedly/.

And DoDo is very very depressed, she said so on phone,

very depressed.

"I know that I am because my little dog recognizes

me," said Gertrude Stein, it's on my wall.

That much for all the philosophy of

Being.

Peter is in Brasil. He hates Christmas in Vienna, the

shopping. And P.Adams still doesn't drink.

And Annette had three trips to hospital this year,

she just called, is back home, in a wheel chair,

broken leg.

"I wish you a better year, only one break, one

trip to the hospital next year, not three," I said.

"No no no," she said, "don't say that..."

NEXT DAY:

The snow melted. I spent three hours chipping ice

from the sidewalk, with Andy and Robert. Broke the

shovel.

My eyes are about to close, it's very late. But I

refuse to sleep. Go to the icebox, get some wine.

Wonder, I wonder where is agnès, and Brigitte. And all

three Domoniques and three Danièles.

Reading Cendrars.

The mind is failing. Maybe I should watch TV.

Maybe there is something with Clint Eastwood or

Bruce Willis -- some action, yes, some

action, that's what I need right now --

NEXT DAY:

Talk with Stan. "I have accepted it, I am not

worrying about it any more. I am continuing

my work, now, scratching film with my nails &

spit. I have no problems with dying at

all. But it's hard for the children as they watch

me die."

LATER:

We played and danced into the morning at Anthology,

all the lonely souls with no other place

to go New Year's Night. It was really quite amazing

with all those musicians coming from the street

out of the Lower East Side night --

our own Free Music Philharmonic sort of,

we thought. And we all had a great time & at

midnight we all went into the streets and danced

and played happily, not minding the cold

at all --.

Yes, life is going on. Forget the utopias:

life is here and now.

I suddenly wonder: where is Harmony tonight, what

crazy fantasies are fluttering around his amazing

head. Sebastian just called from somewhere in

China, somewhere near Burma and Tibet.

"Have you tried any dog meat yet," I asked.

"No," he said, "And I am not sure I will -- You know

how they kill the dogs here, in the markets? In the

bags, with knives, they stab them, in the bags,

and you'll never hear a more terrible bloody

cry like that of the dog dying, stabbed, bagged,

helpless, I don't know how I managed to take

it," he said.

NEXT DAY:

Pip came back, visited Stan. In bed all the

time, too weak. "They told me I should self-hypnotize

myself and face the cancer cells and kill them.

Which I did -- I mean, it's no big deal for me

to go in that kind of state --

I've done it all my life, working on my

films. So I faced them. I saw them, the cancer

cells. And I saw they were so beautiful, I couldn't

kill them, no..." said Stan.

Later, Peter calls, from Vienna, just back from

Brasil. They still kill Indians there even now,

the gold diggers do. And they the diggers are killed

by the gold merchants. "I am resigning from the

human race," he said. "I'll do the same,"

I said.

So that's that.

But this doesn't mean I am giving up in what all those

before me, before us, those who were foolish like me

and some of you, of us, believed in and worked hard

to preserve in order that the City

wouldn't be destroyed by gods -- that is, as long

as there is at least one who believes in the not

believable, in short, in

Poetry.