5 GESTRINOVA STREET Comments

Before we finally moved into
our new home, the Red House, and fixed
a red letter box with jaws big enough
for the size of foreign magazines, and before
our neighbour bid us welcome by giving the box
a good whack on its mouth,
we had both seen ten months
slip unnoticed through our fingers,
and an extra two
also wasted in trying to improve the rating
of the bland local intellectual atmosphere;
despite the fact that we believe only in vistas
of independent breakthrough, we watched
years and decades merge into a weaving
of a thick monochrome Caspian rug
we are still thinking of buying
for our sitting room; and we talked about how
every one of their highly praised
solitudes is quantifiable in always the same depleted words,
gestures even, one of which hit
our poor letter box; and
how, as the ethics sing out
their high C, all of them lose ground to stand on and
stammer unintelligible litanies out of manuals and
old Austro-Hungarian or Yugoslav books of manners,
or they conveniently grab hold of the one remaining strategy
before leaping into the gullet of language -
irony and formalism; and
we knew, even before moving into the Red House,
that the ever-readiness for conflict
comes from below: from the ground floor or the cellar,
from where the body and voice split apart, much like
on our new spiral staircase, where you can
hear the echo to the topmost floors,
yet never see the physical presence
of the person calling.
...
Read full text