The Journey

Co-translator: Pascale Petit

1.

I wake when the wild goose cries    a wild goose crying
thousands of miles away    piercing the darkness
of night's whirlpool

the river turns    a parched man
thinks of a glass's ink-green rim
wingtips sunk in crystal flap coldly    a brittle chill

the hourglass    anchors every house to the street
after rain tyres slash long bandages from the road

I listen to the boats in my body
jostling against each other    the keels fused into one
when the wild goose cries    the city stuck to your eardrum
flies and hangs elsewhere    a geography light as a wreck

2.

                              water has no meaning
the river turns    the wind rasps against dry hulls
rats love climbing the davit struts
the sharp tang of rust    an exquisite fish-bone
moonlight paints a full arc    making-up a corpse's face
quiet as a wooden womb thrown on the bank
a little way from the water's lapping    a little way from the gravel
a little way from the rudder which has escaped all bearings among the stars
the oars drawn in like tired questions
bound in a stranglehold around the axle

                              water has no meaning
but on the porcelain of the water's surface    the marina's glaze is fire-painted
time brings the theme of memory
what can a boat cradled by air remember
except to hear    the dense embroidery of water
except to be a bell    ringing to delete
to delete the engraved ear    the ceaseless migrations
                              but earth falters
the criss-crossed light-years around the nest
no longer know    who sails on what river
water    sinters into a crust of shatterproof porcelain
long broken    fissioning one and every night
fissioning history which so loves to compose

                              water has no meaning    therefore
a terror of raising the periscope
is wakened in the abandoned boat    is wakened and peeps
at the sky where billions of orbits clutch lotuses
all close their coral colours    when they whisper
they are clutched by a grammar which has no past    no nostalgia
the iron organs submit to their internal vacuum
how long can they survive    when fish purposefully seek the poison in oxygen
what more can they possibly find    in front of an unblinking eye
dawn doesn't have to arrive    dawn has already swum elsewhere
an aesthetics cut to the quick    a little way from
desolation

where the wild geese cry is the underwater
co-ordinate    where a corpse can continue the journey that ended last night

3.

the circle's centre    a text secretly watching me
draft another page
the circle    a bed floating in a ghost's script
exposed by water and cancelled by water

did the wild geese really cry    or is the night so deep it's become timeless
the wild geese's arched and chopped necks
the more afraid I am to listen the easier it's summoned

hearing metaphorizes landscape    darkness
metaphorizes matter that confines me
the city's hydromechanics splash out a branch of peach-blossom
the hammering heartbeat    still withholds the horizon

a brain metaphorizes the starry sky    the bed-edge
metaphorizes the boat's side
a scream locked in a raindrop    the pull of dreams
longing for each other over thousands of miles
all in the circle    driven out by what isn't yet written

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