616 – erotism (poetry)

Erotropo, 1970, Sá Nogueira

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I really appreciate everyone who’s been reading me and commenting in this new cycle. I certainly don’t write the way I used to, and I don’t want to, even if I do cherish some of my old poems. It still means a lot to me when someone cares enough to read, especially those that return despite the change.

Both cited lines are from Kafka’s Blue Octavo Notebooks.

What do you think of, when you can’t sleep?

João-Maria

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VERSE FOR MOBILE

616 -(erotism) 

(1)

When I can’t sleep, I think
   of Iceland. The world is made there,
the felt fingers that encage me are made there,
  the evenings’ fiery spit swells up the earth
and urgent silence grasps the domain
  as only a dominator could. 

You are much older than me, now.
  Many whom I’ve loved I picture
going down the Giant’s Causeway, into
  that ebbing bed I cherished coldly. 

You are much older than me, I
  hold the warm back of your hand to my face,
  feel
I too am cold fire bulging 
  underneath my dreams
notice
  how there’s barely any light
listen
  to the brutal absence
I’ve learnt to replicate. 

(2) 

When you pass away, I will still be
  in my waking years. You simper at my
metal water bottle, I can kill someone with it,
 you joke. 
   “We hold the world fast 
	and complain that it is holding us.” 

I don’t try hard enough. I will one day
leave my body to a blood-rose. My thoughts
will trail the swallows into some imagined grove,
and the fevers which are supplied to us will wane,
percolate through the gravel of a dour coast
our feet shall never touch. 

Your cat greets me. Red fur polishing my shins —
she doesn’t like to be petted. Her name is Kafka, it suits
in its own unsuitability. “In a certain sense 
 	you deny the existence of this world.”

There’s warm ash in our evenings. It smells
like camomile. I fear and I welcome your winters,
because they are my winters too. That is where
the world is denied — fear, fear, to welcome it,
to hold onto it, to spend oneself in it… 

(3)

You ask		what I’m reading,
	I say		Artaud. The only 	man
who never went 		mad. 

Our bodies		some of us	  exist in hunger
	some of us		exist in ache. 

I am   —  like you say —   the tragedy of 
	every moment. Slowly	  we give way
   to erosion. Our 	pathetic	play

	rehearsing the wounds	     of those immune
     	rehearsing the screams	     of those silenced
        rehearsing the fate          of those impressed

Kafka’s hungry	   once	again, it can’t	be me,
I wonder if 		she	thinks of Iceland too.

I hold the warm back of your hand
  	to my face. You  hold 	 the world fast
and complain that 	 it holds you.