Give me my friend, a necklace of beads-
My bare throat
Longs for smooth, yellow amber,
The tears of an old primeval forest.

Their hue is July-day and honey
And blossoming linden-branch,
Their scent is like distant, forgotten yearning,
Like a flower wilting and rare.

They lie on my throat
So smoothly, tender and cool,
Just like the touch of your fingers
Like your word so quiet and still.

My throat is so awkwardly bare,
Like a helpless cry in a barren place-
Give me, my friend, a necklace of amber,
Petrified tears of an ancient tree.

What am I doing in the
Lowlands
When I should be climbing
Pinnacles with you?
What am I humming
To myself
When we should be singing
Our song together?

Once your word was a home for me
With windows and doors open to bliss,
And I knew- there was no distance
From which I would not find my way back to you.

And the wrinkle on your brow, like a deep cut
Through the wide fresh field of your sorrow
Soaked in the rain of my grief and the dew of my joy
Like a parched furrow.

And between your eyes and my lips
The space became like the body of a fiddle-
The air, like a string pulled taut, quivered
With the wail of my blood and my thirsty cry.

And now I face the wind, and loneliness, and sadness
Without a home and without you- alone,
And step into the desert through desolation and night
Is like the first forgiveness and the last lament.

My hands-
Two worlds,
With straight, and crooked lines
Of rivers, mountains and valleys

Through narrow, tapering gullys,
Carved by thousands of years
My fate flows, like an unknown and sorrowful water-
Sometimes to you,
Sometimes from you,
And sometimes to an unknown far-off goal.

The ten pink-white pale half moons
Are never snuffed out
Over the quivering waves of my blood
And like eternal witnesses, guard
The sweet secret of my fingertips.

And if sometimes in the abyss of time
The separate worlds of our hands meet,
Then for a moment
Motionless, still,
Hazy from too much sudden joy
The two red suns remain in our flesh.

My town always yearns
For you-
Streets, like lips
Want to fall where you have walked.

The trees before my window dream of you
On long wintery nights.
And they look up at me with anger and distrust
And blossom with dark hues
Of ravens and crows.

Trains go and come
Endlessly running and racing.
Longing flows
Through the veins of forked tracks
To a tiny point
In the great world.
The heart of the station feverishly
Throws you the rainbow of the bridge
To unknown but imagined shores.

My town always yearns for you
And waits-
Perhaps a white bird will flutter
Its tiny black feathers, like letters,
Which will sing out in one breath
My name and the name of my town
And perhaps, perhaps will announce your coming

Dearest
today is as sunny and acid-sweet
as a gold yellow fruit.

Gently
for fear of injuring the clear color
I would wrap it in the soft flax of my dreams
and send it to you
as a letter

But I know
that you would send it back almost at once,
noting neatly in the margin
I just don’t understand you
(but it’s always this way with you, Rachel, always)
and you’d be angry
yes actually angry
that the envelope is empty.

No one knows it, not even you
But since the day when I came to this town
Longing has been roaming over all the streets
And all the trees are greener with a new secret.

No one knows it, not even you
That wherever I go, I carry your glance,
Like an amulet with an engraved spell,
The spell for a fate so near and so far.

No one knows it, not even you
That when I am alone in my quiet hours,
Then do I lead my fingertips over my lips
And take from them your name, like a prayer.

I’d Love to meet your mother once
And kiss her hands.
No doubt she’d find you in my eyes
And all your words which I have cherished in my glance.

Perhaps she’d even come to meet me
With a smile so wise, so still
That always blooms on mothers’ lips
When they see mirrored in the eyes of other women
Their own passion for their son.

Or again, perhaps-
Perhaps her look would warn me,
(mothers always know far more than other women)
of the wild grief
and the bitter joy
of loving her son.

I’d love to meet your mother once
And kiss her hands.

Put the word to my lips
like a signature at the end of a page.
send me – where? I don’t know –
for who waits there but the dark syllable?

I have been anointed with sadness
like the queen of endless night.
She does not know whether she is in a dream
or someone has imagined her.

Perhaps she has only been gambled away
to Fate’s winning hand – wagered
as a stake and forfeited,
abandoned to the wind, to the unknown?

Put the word to my lips
and lead me like a child by the hand
to the border outlined by tears
frontier at the country of night.

What’s the use if from myself I hide the truth,
What’s the use if I deny you to myself-
All my sorrow moves towards you
And all my words lead to your door.

So many years I served as unknown fate,
And so many times I cast aside all joy,
And now a new bondage awaits me,
It is the enslavement to your glance.

From whom should I beg mercy and compassion,
Since it was my blood which gave me up to you?
Or should I open my veins and see,
You flowing forth from me with every drop of life.