Erin Mouré

There was a cold
In which

A line of water across the chest risen
...

Unspeakable. The word that fills up the
poem, that the head
tries to excise.
At 6 a.m., the wet lion. Its sewn plush face
...

Courageous lair "might prevail"
Waking up to her your "yellow coal"

Steals a its way
...

1. And if you were to leave me for my faults
2. I'd not defend my lameness, walking halt
3. and from my trust I would elide your
...

I can t sleep for grief.
I can t sleep for longing.
I can t sleep for wanting happiness!
Mother, how will I live.
...

It was at the fountain where I washed my curls,
Mother, and where I did loosen them
and me
oh lucent
...

I m not pleading any thread of love
until I see you.

I m not plaiting my hair above
until the sea brings you.
...

I m going to walk to the mountain. As if
we could meet there!

First I must dream the mountain
...

Is bad weather coming
how would we know
Is bad weather coming
call everyone
...

In one of its cornices are the two boots of a man
In one of the stone canzorros
If you listen you can hear him walk
...

On the hill there is no hay
but rain

no hay for a hayrick but
small rivulets singing the grass down
...

I am in the little field of my mother
Her field touches
oaks of the valley
and I touch the faces of my corn
...

At night in the valley of penedos erguidos
a glint of wolfram

the uncles' job at night
to touch the glint of wolfram
...

In a woman's arms lies a man
his skin is blue and his lips are blue
and his chest is a hayrick
flat with forks of blue
...

A little river and a big river
the story of the bronchials
Some of earth's heartbeat but not all
...

Nowhere yet has a footfall proven
adequate to its situation
Waiting for the boots to call out
from their stall by the door
...

Die Welt ist fort, ich muss dich tragen
Paul Celan
This pietà
is a man
in the care of another man
as tomorrow begs them
into the most gentle
torsion of a foot in the back

this back, in turn, touches the foot
back, gently

!flesruoy fo erac ekaT
...

And so, i took the temperature of the mouth.
And so, i took the temperature of the armpit.
Washing it first, patting it dry, closing
the arm to the body,
tucking the elbow where the waist is.

And so, i took the temperature of the anus,
bending my arm around my back
to do so.

Churchbells rang out, it was noon.
No-one was outside on the road.

Everywhere, everywhere, everywhere:
the same temperature.
...

basically driven
One of us was scorched by it.

It caused even stone to crack open, repeatedly dust
entered even the sky.

We are an adjustment of the pod's rupture,
that seizes locally the seed of the sky,

here were we chosen, separately groping asphalts,
so as to seize, innately, the sky.

Oh, i never took your hand without piquancy,
when i said gracefully the said things,
i never said them for the sake of saying.

In the net of this sky our indebtedness soars,
all of it above us, as if pretending,

though in seizing the sky nearest us
we inch forward, we are penetrated by
all the sky waking up as if it were naturally ours.

So i let ache ache in me, so that i do not lose you
from my eyes, let you
penetrate my seeing so gentle so i may seize you
in orbit, as sky.
And if you won't stay, be not impervious to our we,
if you won't mix your breath with me, exalting breath . . .
If the perfume of you were to stir up breath
i would exalt, as a foot does,
strangely rising

or a seed, seizing locally the grass of the sky.
...

Create voice with bone,
tip voice with steel,
die voice with a journey,
clot voice with a word
and you, unconditionally
Plough with a stone from the pyramids
plough with a stone
and don't splay the earth, and don't splay
it, gather singular
singular
Without make-believe,
without making time.
...