Being Late

Something dangerous
                   is beginning:
I
 am coming late
               to my own self.
I made an appointment
                     with my thoughts--
the thoughts
            were snatched
                         from me.
I made an appointment
                     with Faulkner--
but they made me
                go to a banquet.
I made an appointment
                     with history,
but a grass-widow
                 dragged me into bed.
Worse
     than barbed wire
are birthday parties,
                     mine and others',
and roasted suckling pigs
                         hold me
like a sprig of parsley
                       between their teeth!
Led away for good
to a life absolutely not my own,
everything that I eat,
                      eats me,
everything that I drink,
                        drinks me.
I made an appointment
                     with myself,
but they invite me
                  to feast on my own spareribs.
I am garlanded
              from all sides
not by strings of bagels,
                         but by the holes of bagels,
and I look like
               an anthology
                           of zeros.
Life gets broken
                into hundreds of lifelets,
that exhaust
            and execute me.
In order
        to get through to myself
I had to smash my body
                      against others',
and my fragments,
                 my smithereens,
are trampled
            by the roaring crowd.
I am trying
           to glue myself together,
but my arms
           are still severed.
I'd write
         with my left leg,
but both the left
                 and the right
have run off,
             in different directions.
I don't know--
              where is my body?
And soul?
Did it really fly off,
without a murmured
                  "good-bye!"?
How do I break through
                      to a faraway namesake,
waiting for me
              in the cold somewhere?
I've forgotten
              under which clock
I am waiting
            for myself.
For those who don't know
                        who they are,
time
    does not exist.
No one is
         under the clock.
On the clock
            there is nothing.
I am late for my appointment
                            with me.
There is no one.
                Nothing but cigarette butts.
Only one flicker--
                  a lonely,
                           dying
                                spark...

1985
Translated by Albert C. Todd