I was unprepared for your lack of self-awareness
and the way you approach life like a
kid running the wrong way with the ball.
Sometimes I feel like your mother
sending you to your room so you can tantrum.
Other times I feel like your daughter
when you lay out my shoes as if I can’t get them myself.
Talking to you is throwing rocks at a land mine;
There is a difference between creativity and indecision.
There is a difference between sensitivity and overreacting.
You have to find who you are, and stop lifting so many lids.
Your anxious energy is clinging to my calm like a parasite
Eventually, you need to find a calm of your own
take your spinning outside inward, where things are still.
I want to help you
and I want to escape,
because rarely do I feel like your lover
partly because I don’t want to anymore.
I don’t want your touch, I don’t want your kiss
your hands are vexatious, please just let me sleep!
I don’t want to gag and choke on your tongue.
Just rest for a while,
so I can figure out how to do this.

On the day the world ends
A bee circles a clover,
A fisherman mends a glimmering net.
Happy porpoises jump in the sea,
By the rainspout young sparrows are playing
And the snake is gold-skinned as it should always be.

On the day the world ends
Women walk through the fields under their umbrellas,
A drunkard grows sleepy at the edge of a lawn,
Vegetable peddlers shout in the street
And a yellow-sailed boat comes nearer the island,
The voice of a violin lasts in the air
And leads into a starry night.


And those who expected lightning and thunder
Are disappointed.
And those who expected signs and archangels’ trumps
Do not believe it is happening now.
As long as the sun and the moon are above,
As long as the bumblebee visits a rose,
As long as rosy infants are born
No one believes it is happening now.


Only a white-haired old man, who would be a prophet
Yet is not a prophet, for he’s much too busy,
Repeats while he binds his tomatoes:
There will be no other end of the world,
There will be no other end of the world.

1
We, whose lungs fill with the sweetness of day.
Who in May admire trees flowering
Are better than those who perished.

We, who taste of exotic dishes,
And enjoy fully the delights of love,
Are better than those who were buried.

We, from the fiery furnaces, from behind barbed wires
On which the winds of endless autumns howled,
We, who remember battles where the wounded air roared in
paroxysms of pain.
We, saved by our own cunning and knowledge.

By sending others to the more exposed positions
Urging them loudly to fight on
Ourselves withdrawing in certainty of the cause lost.

Having the choice of our own death and that of a friend
We chose his, coldly thinking: Let it be done quickly.

We sealed gas chamber doors, stole bread
Knowing the next day would be harder to bear than the day before.

As befits human beings, we explored good and evil.
Our malignant wisdom has no like on this planet.

Accept it as proven that we are better than they,
The gullible, hot-blooded weaklings, careless with their lives.

2
Treasure your legacy of skills, child of Europe.
Inheritor of Gothic cathedrals, of baroque churches.
Of synagogues filled with the wailing of a wronged people.
Successor of Descartes, Spinoza, inheritor of the word 'honor',
Posthumous child of Leonidas
Treasure the skills acquired in the hour of terror.

You have a clever mind which sees instantly
The good and bad of any situation.
You have an elegant, skeptical mind which enjoys pleasures
Quite unknown to primitive races.

Guided by this mind you cannot fail to see
The soundness of the advice we give you:
Let the sweetness of day fill your lungs
For this we have strict but wise rules.

3
There can be no question of force triumphant
We live in the age of victorious justice.

Do not mention force, or you will be accused
Of upholding fallen doctrines in secret.

He who has power, has it by historical logic.
Respectfully bow to that logic.

Let your lips, proposing a hypothesis
Not know about the hand faking the experiment.

Let your hand, faking the experiment
No know about the lips proposing a hypothesis.

Learn to predict a fire with unerring precision
Then burn the house down to fulfill the prediction.

4
Grow your tree of falsehood from a single grain of truth.
Do not follow those who lie in contempt of reality.

Let your lie be even more logical than the truth itself
So the weary travelers may find repose in the lie.

After the Day of the Lie gather in select circles
Shaking with laughter when our real deeds are mentioned.

Dispensing flattery called: perspicacious thinking.
Dispensing flattery called: a great talent.

We, the last who can still draw joy from cynicism.
We, whose cunning is not unlike despair.

A new, humorless generation is now arising
It takes in deadly earnest all we received with laughter.

5
Let your words speak not through their meanings
But through them against whom they are used.

Fashion your weapon from ambiguous words.
Consign clear words to lexical limbo.

Judge no words before the clerks have checked
In their card index by whom they were spoken.

The voice of passion is better than the voice of reason.
The passionless cannot change history.

6
Love no country: countries soon disappear
Love no city: cities are soon rubble.

Throw away keepsakes, or from your desk
A choking, poisonous fume will exude.

Do not love people: people soon perish.
Or they are wronged and call for your help.

Do not gaze into the pools of the past.
Their corroded surface will mirror
A face different from the one you expected.

7
He who invokes history is always secure.
The dead will not rise to witness against him.

You can accuse them of any deeds you like.
Their reply will always be silence.

Their empty faces swim out of the deep dark.
You can fill them with any feature desired.

Proud of dominion over people long vanished,
Change the past into your own, better likeness.

8
The laughter born of the love of truth
Is now the laughter of the enemies of the people.

Gone is the age of satire. We no longer need mock.
The sensible monarch with false courtly phrases.

Stern as befits the servants of a cause,
We will permit ourselves sycophantic humor.

Tight-lipped, guided by reasons only
Cautiously let us step into the era of the unchained fire.

This shattered house
  I've found myself surrounded by
Breaks a little more each day
   The walls I've built and plastered
Are peeling away layers of guilt
    Hanging mirrors with shadows of reflections
    Ghosts of ink spilt
This floor, these bricks, the cement out the doorstep
     Pavement falling apart from where so many shoes have walked
   Decorated with outlines of broken hearts in chalk
      If these walls could talk
They'd tell stories of rage and pain,
   Of the misery born into its foundation
           Day after day
If these cupboards could hold as many secrets as those walls have heard
    Of the lies they've tried to hide away inside, they would burst
      If you could save the tear drops that have fallen under this crumbling roof top
    Then you could drown this dilapidated house
       Bury it alive with no doubt that the years of emotion and agony it's kept hidden inside
  Will easily and willingly have peace when it dies
       The color of the paint would simply be forgotten before the end of the day
     The torn and rotten foundation would just be ripped away and replaced
  With stronger cement at its base for someone new to cling to
      And new walls and paint for another soul to suffer through
  But this shattered house still stands
      There's no plans to rebuild all these shards of my broken heart splattered on the ground
   And nothing will ever replace my soul when this house falls down