Barbarian in my mouth Poem by Paul Snoek

Barbarian in my mouth,
I proclaim the bleeding tinder of truth,
not out of love, but out of nightly gravity,
not the peace, but the sky-wide clarity, do I proclaim
in the anchor-casting light of God.

For God, I carry him slowly and steadily
as the marble lung of water,
I carry him greedily and satisfied
in the soft saddle of my sleep.

Long in the sowing hills of the hands and fertile,
lovely in the emptiness of trembling love,
and in my body, rank and mouthless
or screaming like hunger in the root.

Translated by Kendall Dunkelberg

From: Hercules, Richelieu and Nostradamus, Green Integer, Los Angeles