sweet

I was in a dreamstate and this was causing a problem
with the traffic. I felt lonely, like I’d missed the boat,
or I’d found the boat and it was deserted. In the middle
of the road a child’s shoe glistened. I walked around it.
It woke me up a little. The child had disappeared. Some
mysteries are better left alone. Others are dreary, distasteful,
and can disarrange a shadow into a thing of unspeakable beauty.
Whose child is that?

Doubt is easy. You welcome it, your old friend.
Poet Edward Field told a bunch of kids,
Invite it in, feed it a good dinner, give it a place to sleep
on the couch.  Don’t make it too comfortable or
it might never leave.  When it goes away, say okay, I’ll see you
again later. Don’t fear. Don’t give it your notebook.

As for bad reviews, sure. William Stafford advised no credence to
praise or blame. Just steady on. 
Once a man named Paul called me “a kid.” I liked kids 
but I knew he meant it as an insult.  Anyway, I was a kid. 
I guess he was saying, why should we listen to kids? 
A newspaper described a woman named Frieda being asked 
if “I was serious” and “she whistled.” What did that mean?
How do you interpret a whistle? This was one thing that bothered me. 
And where did Frieda ever go? 

Translated from the French by Marilyn Hacker

The outflow of your drifting—
up until now you’ve slid along the road

I would like
in a faraway language
to tell you what I don’t
understand 

**
Nothing pulls you back from doubt any longer
from obsession 
from seeding 
your body is amnesia   plural   futile   limpid
a disappearance
stands in for space
stands in for an emptiness
to circle round 

**
Not visible   the sense
slumbers teeters on the edge
you expect nothing of the hours
not the days returned 
not daybreak
you expect 

**
There had been no
days without sand 
and you thought the sun
inexhaustible
you had not seen:
the lantern is cold 

**
Leaving you
clamber up your confusion
on the cord
of forgetting 
Leaving is 
all of life still
behind you 

**
What remains
to begin each morning 
at the same hour 
like 
starting from zero
to answer time’s memory loss
and the drift of ages
your mother, trembling
the genealogy of the worst
the disaster of the gods

to finish counting the remaining hours

**
You can’t bring yourself
to let go of the sky’s edge

at nine o’clock
this morning 
you hold the sailboat’s breath
head for the narrowest path
to redraw the mirage 

**
You ask yourself what is 
a place of your own 
if you must fade yourself out
unweight yourself of promises
yesterday you wanted to know if
and now you no longer know why
 
you should have dived in with no expectations