ISSUE: Summer 2008
Unlike Icarus, I am learning
to fly on my feet. Sometimes on all fours.
Still, the longing is one and the same:
to row with two revolving arms
closer to
a burning thing.
Five a.m., and the air is stormy.
Again, it is dangerous to wade into the day,
blue as it may be.
This island is made up of sharp fragments.
Things that were shipwrecked are building it,
but on it I can live.
I swim toward the jagged desk
grab hold and climb aboard.
Maybe this time I’ll be able to jump
without removing my feet from home,
from love. I call out to the tightrope walker
who walks the spine.
It isn’t water that surrounds me,
your face surrounds me
on all sides.
At night everything spins
back, over-the-shoulder—
if I can’t change the truth
I will change the distance to it.
—Translated by Vivian Eden
