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Whoever meets it
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The fearful time lag of the test sinks in. The turnpikes on all frontiers are moved back into brightness.
Hilde Domin
Whoever meets it
will be lifted up
as if by a huge crane
and set down
where nothing holds true
where no road
leads from yesterday to tomorrow.
Buttons, jewellery and colour
will be swept
with a broom
from his clothes.
Then he will be stripped
and put on show.
Hostile hands
feel his hips.
He’s pressure cooked
in tears
in the slow kitchens of time
until the flesh
on his bones becomes tender.
He gets pressed through the finest
sieves of pain
and strained through
pitiless cloths
which let nothing through
and on which the last grain of
self respect
is left behind.
He gets chosen
and punished
and is made to eat the dust
off the soles of the disappointed
on all the country lanes of betrayal
and as it’s harvest time
his blood
shall fertilise the large vines
and protect them from the frost.
But sometimes
if he is lucky
(though through no understandable
merit
just as he was not put outside
for any known fault
but simply because he was on hand)
he will be reprieved
by the unknown
all powerful judge
as long as there is time.
Then he gets rediscovered
like a new continent
or a crucifix
after an air-raid
in a rubble filled shelter.
It’s as though the points are set
his nowhere
is coupled
to the old landscape
like a carriage shunted
on to a train
from a dead end.
Under the rainbowed gate
on a certain day of the calendar
that is thick with future
a tender yesterday
recognises him and opens its arms
to receive him.
No cat with nine lives
no lizard and no starfish
whose lost limb grows back
no severed worm
is as tough as the man
who has been placed
in the sun
of love and hope.
His fear fades
like the marks of the branding iron
or the scars of the wounds
from his body.
His defoliated
tree of joy
grows new shoots
and even the bark of trust
slowly grows back.
He gets used to the altered
ploughed image
in the mirror
he oils his skin
and covers the impudent
skeleton man
with a new layer of fat
until he no longer
smells strange
to everyone.
And quite unremarked
maybe on a holiday
or on a birthday
he no longer sits
only on the edge
of the offered chair
as if on the run
or as if it has
wormeaten legs
but he sits
with his kin at the table
and is at home
and almost
safe
and delights in
the gifts
and loves what is borrowed
more than what is owned
and every day
is for him
surprisingly present
so luminously light
and clearly bordered
like the span
between the outspread
pinions
of a gliding bird.
The fearful time lag
of the test
sinks in.
The turnpikes
on all frontiers
are moved back
into brightness.
But the substance
of the self
is as altered
as the metal that comes out of the furnace.
Or it’s as if
from the tenth or twentieth floor
- the difference is marginal
for a salto mortale
without a safety net –
he’s fallen on his feet
in the middle of Times Square
and has escaped
the muzzles of the oncoming cars
by the skin of his teeth
just before the lights turn red.
And so a certain
birdlike lightness
has stayed with him.
*
But you
who meet him
on every street
you who break
bread with him
bend down and stroke
the delicate moss on the ground
without ruffling it
stroke the little animal
without making it flinch.
Lay your hand protectively
on the head of a child,
let it be kissed
by the tender mouth
of the beloved,
or hold it
as under a tap
under the flowing gold
of the afternoon sun
so that it becomes transparent
and completely useless
at lending a hand
in the building
of barbed wire hells
whether public
or intimate
and so that it never
calls out “me too”
when panic is handing out
its fearful weapons
and never
gets to hold
the great iron rod
that cuts through
the Other
as through foam.
And that it never
comes home to you
in the evening
like a retriever
with a pheasant
or a little hare
the booty of its instinct
laying for you
the skin of a you
on your table.
So that
when on the last day
it lies before you
on the bedspread
like a pale flower
faded
but not quite as light
and not quite as pure
but like a human hand
which gets stained
and washed
and stained again
you thank it
and say
farewell my hand.
You were a loving
link
between me and the world.
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