I
‘I have come from afar, on a stream
of endless loves.’ Hewn from the stone
that thrust into the fields like a tongue of lava,
she, breaking fire, opens her wrathful lips
and stares, with moss and muck on her eyes,
blindingly at me: the snatched acts
in parking lots and parks, lifts and luxury suites.
No matter where: hacking with asthma you rode me.
‘And you, you too came from afar, from a dream
of the tree of life. And of falling.’
Rasping in her throat, gasping from the horn.
I climb the stairs, debase myself. Approach her.
II
Each step strewn with tainted sacrifices, her
dhoti of white and black rotted to rags.
No breath of wind stirred the sooted palms.
I put my arms around her. You pulled the trigger:
long tongues of lust on a charred screen,
holy flickering above our heads. The school chaplain
with the thick glasses and the pointer.
Spit on the blackboard. The Act of Contrition.
He bent down over us, stammered with your voice:
‘Threaten me, betray me with your mouth.’
It is my profession. The snow falls virtuously,
on the sawahs, on the sacrifice. On my wife.
III
In you the parallel world pushes its way upwards;
this is no land of silk, under the sawahs smoulders
the fire with which you, after each time, arise anew,
alienate me from myself, scorch each man in me.
With rice I hallow your sex in which nothing may grow,
your womb that petrifies like the tongue with which I once,
unslakable with lust, ruled you according to the old laws.
Staring at the attic monitor I discern how much
my wife coincides with my image of you.
Lying and printing I cover you with faithfulness,
still your head does not succumb under my fruits,
still you open yourself: waiting in the garden of the clinic.
Publisher: In de Knipscheer, December 2003.
Book: € 15,00, cd (music by Dirk Stromberg): € 18,00. Set book + cd: € 29,50.
Postbox 6107, 2011 HC Haarlem, The Netherlands.
www.alberthagenaars.nl
www.indeknipscheer.nl
