„...say the aerial roots" * Poem by Jürgen Nendza

I

Perhaps

it´s the trembling

we begin and end with,

while the eyes suckle the sky

to the rhythm of a language

without any personal possessives:

copper, cinnamon, a turquoise-coloured

flyweight, say the aerial roots,

and we atomize with the hummingbird's

fan of light in non-stop flight, jetlag:

three grammes of flight tones and ecstasy,

variations in Calliope's voice.

And we remain standing

in the air, in a loop without

a dead turning point, while

beneath us the landscape

marches on.

II

Your eyebrow's

a questionnaire, in your eyes

the glow-worm's conversation:

say, do we grow another skin,

when you look at me like that

and we begin

to expand, to double:

mot mot, the pinions

of paradise, red red

the flowers of the flamboyant,

and the glow-worms ask:

is the hummingbird a metaphor

for a swarm of fish circling

around themselves, glittering

in colourful sleep, a lighting up

of the tints beneath our eyelids,

when speaking we

rotate: come come,

everyone lies alone

in his recovery room,

halved.

III

The heat

a huge hand

baked from light. We

drink coconut water, hear

the thirst that is slaked

along the welded joints

of our bodies: one's own

name splits up

beneath the aerial roots,

is a divided word

like copper or cinnamon,

without any personal possessives,

and a vibrating

at the root of the tongue

in the rotation

of the wings. Your lips

are singing bowls

at whose edges visible

light vanishes,

when only time

travels with us.

IV

The rain

ties its strings

to a beating wall:

a grey continuous tone

lies over us, the green,

the things: a skin

beneath which we lose our way.

Stunned as though

overwhelming loneliness

had opened its sluicegates,

our breath folds up

what light is left like a tablecloth:

we begin from memory

to accompany ourselves

while we talk of the

non-stop flight, search for

an explainable sequence, a handrail

into the dark and no one

with naked eye

recognises love.

V

Terracotta tile,

the print of your wet foot.

The present is vaporized

in this building of heat

and rain: fine air passages

lead to the tourqoise-coloured

flyweight, through the chambers

of the bones, when the trembling

feeds us beyond the light barriers.

Then let's talk about the hummingbird,

which has been said already

a thousand times, about the table,

which has been said already

a thousand times, about a thousand times:

never do we have enough hands

to grasp ourselves.

VI

The evening

gathers itself in

the rain tree. Yellow between

pairs of leaves

the queen of the night

lures like a deserted

feeling, which discovers us

when sleep speaks us:

turning over we've spread

the sheet and ourselves.

Contact sleep is how we attempt

the touch of wings, feathered

with the radius of distance,

until by daylight we grow

tired under the weight

of separated

bodies.

VII

The staccato of deadlines

is a buzzing flight:

a thousand times our eyes suckle

the sky, we throw out

aerial roots searching for

deep warmth with a chorus

made up of speech and the silence

at the end of the scale

of visible light. A thousand times

clouds sweep across

everything, death watches us

in the mirror

and still each time

your breath curves

beyond this image,

your breast draws

bow, brow and bay:

come come

says the trembling,

let's balance

on this frequency

where we end.

VIII

Perhaps

one day we shall take pleasure

in the way the ants step

out from under our shadow.

One day, when your circulation

fails, your skin

will be as white

as the paper on which

I am writing, on which you

read, white and still:

it will be a cast off

wedding dress always already

inscribed by you

and when the turning point

has died, the sheet pauses

in a final turning over

beneath a landscape

made of dreams

that floats over us,

then I'll ask you:

how long an exposure

does happiness need before

our eyes close us.

Translated by Richard Martin