COUNTDOWN Poem by Morten Søndergaard

for a sculpture by Michelangelo
(Pietà di Rondanini in Milan)
and within the block of marble the sculpture lies waiting
and within it another
and another
and where am I to stop
when doubt remains
the words lie
in my pen
it feels good
to perish
in this sea of words

but you whisper to me
no one manages to complete
what they were busy doing
that love is a single
unfinished wish to go on
you lift me up
you let me fall
perhaps it is death
you want to walk

perhaps what I seek
within the white marble
hovers like fear frozen
in a jumper's eye
suicidal silence momentarily falls
then suddenly nothing
my arm falls asleep
outside my body

perhaps it is like the rolled-up darkness
under a street lamp
or something else
and far more complex
my father, for example, in an epileptic fit
what his eyes see
when they roll white

I try to raise him again
entangled in the darkness
so heavy a body can be
when it transforms
into strange
soft stone

or is it
my small white mother
who has come
to strangle me
there is almost nothing left

a double-headed angel
that melts everything
with its
introverted look

two people
in a peculiar
union

a mountain
attempting

to walk