^{translated from the German by Pierre Joris}

So many constellations, dis-
played to us. I was,
when I looked at you—when?—
outside with
the other worlds.

O, these paths, galactic,
O this hour that billowed
the nights over to us into
the burden of our names. It is,
I know, not true,
that we lived, a mere
breath blindly moved between
there and not-there and sometimes,
comet-like an eye whizzed
toward extinguished matter, in the canyons,
there where it burned out, stood
tit-gorgeous time, along
which grew up and down
& away what
is or was or will be—,

I know,
I know and you know, we knew,
we didn’t know, for we
were there and not there,
and sometimes, when
only Nothingness stood between us, we
found truly together.

Soviel Gestirne

Soviel Gestirne, die
man uns hinhält. Ich war,
als ich dich ansah – wann? –,
draußen bei
den andern Welten.

O diese Wege, galaktisch,
o diese Stunde, die uns
die Nächte herüberwog in
die Last unsrer Namen. Es ist,
ich weiß es, nicht wahr,
daß wir lebten, es ging
blind nur ein Atem zwischen
Dort und Nicht-da und Zuweilen,
kometenhaft schwirrte ein Aug
auf Erloschenes zu, in den Schluchten,
da, wo’s verglühte, stand
zitzenprächtig die Zeit,
an der schon empor- und hinab-
und hinwegwuchs, was
ist oder war oder sein wird –,

ich weiß,
ich weiß und du weißt, wir wußten,
wir wußten nicht, wir
waren ja da und nicht dort,
und zuweilen, wenn
nur das Nichts zwischen uns stand, fanden
wir ganz zueinander.

My mother married a man who divorced her for money. Phyllis, he would say, If you don’t stop buying jewelry, I will have to divorce you to keep us out of the poorhouse. When he said this, she would stub out a cigarette, mutter something under her breath. Eventually, he was forced to divorce her. Then, he died. Then she did. The man was not my father. My father was buried down the road, in a box his other son selected, the ashes of his third wife in a brass urn that he will hold in the crook of his arm forever. At the reception, after his funeral, I got mean on four cups of Lime Sherbet Punch. When the man who was not my father divorced my mother, I stopped being related to him. These things are complicated, says the Talmud. When he died, I couldn’t prove it. I couldn’t get a death certificate. These things are complicated, says the Health Department. Their names remain on the deed to the house. It isn’t haunted, it’s owned by ghosts. When I die, I will come in fast and low. I will stick the landing. There will be no confusion. The dead will make room for me.

Ask me about the time
my brother ran towards the sun
arms outstretched. His shadow chased him
from corner store to church
where he offered himself in pieces.

Ask me about the time
my brother disappeared. At 16,
tossed his heartstrings over telephone wire,
dangling for all the rez dogs to feed on.
Bit by bit. The world took chunks of
my brother’s flesh.

Ask me about the first time
we drowned in history. 8 years old
during communion we ate the body of Christ
with palms wide open, not expecting wine to be
poured into our mouths. The bitterness
buried itself in my tongue and my brother
never quite lost his thirst for blood or vanishing
for more days than a shadow could hold.

Ask me if I’ve ever had to use
bottle caps as breadcrumbs to help
my brother find his way back home.
He never could tell the taste between
a scar and its wounding, an angel or demon.

Ask me if I can still hear his
exhaled prayers: I am still waiting to be found.
To be found, tell me why there is nothing
more holy than becoming a ghost.

I wish we could hear them just once,
instead of over and over.

One day, tired, I sat down on the couch
just to listen to the ringing in my ears.

My eyes are so deep-set in my head
it makes it hard to see

past the memory of lost glamour,
being born too late, living in the shadow

of a beautiful downtown turned into
a ghost town, a hollowed hulk,

and how that itself now turns into
a memory of treasures,

how when something taken for granted
is suddenly over, the pause when you take stock

and realize you’ll never have as much,
that change is always a lessening,

the wall effect, you can’t see what’s next
even though it’s supposedly obvious.

I don’t know what to say about that,
I mean, I’m just barely here.

At first, I spoke to my neighbor daily, in part because of the weather
(he could still sit out on bench)

in part because of vice
(I was chain-smoking and he’d shout for one when I passed)

but this stopped, in part because of trust
(he did not believe I was smoking less and resented the imagined lie)

in part because of routes
(at first I added 15 minutes to my commute to walk north, past his apartment, towards 6th avenue, and up through the park, as this removes 25-50% of my anxiety, but now that I have lived here half a year, I find myself incapable of waking up early enough to permit this easy remedy, so I walk the other, faster direction)

and in part because of novelty
(having covered introductions, we now tend to say only “hello” when I do pass).

I have a sense of what he looks like, due to this regularity,
but I could not describe his building.

Someone I was hoping to kiss informed me
that it’s easy to remember

images (all you have to do, they said, is take
a lesson from a children’s book, one in which a girl could

remember anything she wanted by saying “click,”
and imagining she held a camera). Later, distracted

on my walk home by the kiss’s memory, which came
easily because my eyes had been closed for it, I took a wrong

turn and struggled to find my building
on an unfamiliar street. That’s why I’m studying:

There is my own blue bicycle; the round planter to the left
of the steps I use to enter, which the downstairs neighbor keeps

tidy—cutting back the plants that don’t stay green
in the winter, for example, but keeping the heartier cabbages

watered—though I have never seen her do this work;
somewhere between two and five pride flags,

some of which are there year round while others
appear only in June; a fire hydrant; the windows

of the apartment that face mine, through which I see my least
favorite bookshelves: they look mildly expensive

and comprise a set of intersecting diamonds, making the books
hard to remove and reshelf since they are all piled at slants;

some scaffolding that seems to attract unhappy couples mid-fight;
one set of table and chairs; a house that frequently puts books

or toys or clothes out on the sidewalk for free. I know that
there are two or more remarkable sculptures, but only

because I remember remarking: one might be of a silver
bust of a woman, maybe an angel or a pop star, while others

are definitely at the base of the railings to the steps across the street, but I don’t
remember now if they are dogs or birds. There is a statue of an owl

on a window ledge I can see from one chair, and it often scares me.
Now some buildings have Christmas lights, but I couldn’t say

which, and that could easily lead me to turn down any other residential
block. There is a lilac bush immediately next door, and in May, it helped me

identify my building from very far away. But when we came
to pick up our keys, I began to cry—it resembles

another that grew in front of my childhood and I am
sentimental. I sat down and demanded my roommate tell me

why he hadn’t pointed out the lilacs earlier, and he threw up
his hands: he had tried, but I had talked over him.

When the kisser who recommended I take snapshots
of my surroundings came to my apartment, there is a chance

that they noticed many more things: they probably know
whether it is broken up at any point by vinyl siding, or what words

appear on the inflatable Santa down the hill. When we passed
through the park, I did attempt to capture the snow lifting

from the ground in spirals, the two bodies—one seated, one running—blocking
some light, the corner-eye view of their metallic jacket. But I wanted

to remember what we looked like to the seated person, so replaced the above
description with an imagined photo of two people connected

by elbows, which I now see instead.
My panic, when it comes in public, starts

with lost vision; at home, with the heart. The classroom used to turn
to white: I could make out, maybe, the light from the streetlamps

visible from the class’ windows, but the shapes of the students’ faces
and the windows themselves would be gone. I got very good

at remembering where I had left my chair, sitting down, and pretending
to glance thoughtfully at my notebook. If I said “yes, mmhmm,

anyone else?” my students would feel prompted to speak
without raising hands, and sometimes I’d take illegible

notes on their comments in order to prolong the period
before I would need my eyesight back. If no voices emerged, but

I could register the electronic sounds enough to know my hearing
was still with me, I would spontaneously become a person

who lectures, or I would ask them to break into groups of 3-4
to collectively answer some question. Years before, when sound

and sight left together, I would sit on the floor
of the subway hoping to faint from a more auspicious

starting position. Looking at things indirectly—on a telephone,
say—does not typically produce such a reaction.