from STRANGER

said the voice against her back,
the sea inside her blouse.
Then she knew she had to leave although she never knew where to
because she possessed no lindens nor flowers nor portraits
dusty since childhood.

"The first thing I saw was an island surrounded by diamonds
I tried to touch the coast and the diamonds were spears and the water slime.
Further on was a city going mad with lights
its pavements were like Persian carpets
when I trod them I saw they were walking toward themselves.
Again I found myself in the midst of the deep,
the rudder was following its own route.
I levitated over the waves and saw another illusion blocking the way
it was Athens or New York.
Some men were throwing rotten tomatoes from the quay.

Stranger!
murmured the sea in my ears
stranger!"

Then she shouted from the stern and her shout
split the theatre in half:

"Strange the sun's beams burning my face
strange the sky enclosed in a dome of clouds
pasture for birds and hungry eyes
strange the water that wets hair and cannot stop
nor settle its dampness in a single place
strange the sea that is tomb and womb of itself."

Stranger! the voice shouted again
and I saw her white bones turn to dust
borne away by the winds.

Because we will eat Christmas chestnuts in any corner of the globe and you
will still belong to the vast race that has no flowery floor nor
portraits dusty since childhood
Stranger drinks water salt that burns the eyes speaks and receives only sea's
litany eats chestnuts and roast turkey while she sinks her brain in the loneliness of the sea

IV

Stranger entered the Café and everyone looked
at the diamond hanging in her nose
others, at the heavy load of days
in her gaunt gaze
the pure bone of pain.
When she spoke we all knew
who she was.

"Life passed me by and called me stranger
in the sun, in the stars, in the rivers
in your own land
stranger you will be in the clay that modeled you
strange will be your gods
that you carry like an empty bag on your back
strange death which will find in you only
a foretaste of itself:
bones instead of flesh
nothing instead of soul."

Stranger sank her tooth in the wafer
of her journeys

"No more journeys," life shouted,
"nothing will change the strangeness of the soil where you will die."

from A MUMMY'S DIARY

XXXII

Men and women go in and out of the motel
where one creak is enough to lay bare the flower.
Men and women go ceaselessly in and out
they grope behind the door for an answer
the rose intact,
seeing for the first time on the sweaty bed
between the thick walls of conditioned air.
Men and women go in and out of the motel
between the sheets male and female
bone against bone, soul against soul
desperately seek the answer
the rock unscathed.
In another room He is alone with the thought of himself
cut off by thick walls he hears only his silence
alien to the stripped daisy, the murmur of petals
God is alone and thinks himself.