Palisade
don’t say I am silent when I am silent
wait for the taciturn pick the sound out of the mouth
till I stammer stammer too seize the faltering!
falter me free hear my countless tongues mutter
mutter mouth monster a mouth
for the falsetto from the taciturn once
I echo over everything once!
openly I flow to a world in which ancestors
ships (earthborns) are turners
turners, from whose the blood, by way of the hammers blow
stows through my seablue veins
along the bones nightingales
promptly the rusty hair wraps itself
around the pale skulls crown
come turn the taciturn to the sun
see how microscopic Rhine barges
point themselves a way from A to B across this body
who provokes the blush?
break then break let the marrow out of the marrow medulla
red and yellow ensigns of a mediaeval procession
through the steets of this body
swing to the stacking of bone and socket
swing to the time after time of pivoting vertebrae
from a clumsy fishbone swing
palisade of identical skirmishes
swing to the sesambone cuboidbone and talus
swing to the emergingturn who counts the ribs?
I reel around see how my bones run wild
we become entangled in the undergrowth! purify the skeleton
shelter me for bone-earth
with a last strain of the neck I regard the sea
and reach to the urn which stands on deck
to be blown adrift
if I break there must be wind
translated by Julia Hope