Dunes

Allí
donde mi presencia es esperada me hago realidad.

(Jorge Pimentel, Balada para un Caballo)


I.

No heavenly body nor an earthly one,
no gliding between them.
No sleepless head drooping above or below the bed.
No abdication of territory or status – not a chance.

Your real hand leading to the origin of mine,
this very chair here you and I in turn sit on – is enough:
tout à sa place.  

Here you are, here I am, here is all
we need,
here are
two large dunes that fold into one,
and then rain and then passion and then the ground beneath our feet.

Two large dunes from all that is familiar, but from four very concrete
and independent hands, four eyes, ten toes and fingers.                

Two dunes out of a myriad sand granules touching
each other, each of them communicating with all the rest.

Dunes, two curves closed into a circle by a gentle embrace of love.        
Dunes, two inner worlds seeping into one in a gentle embrace of love.



II.

And then you come and reveal yourself in all that you are.
And then you come and read me where I have never
hoped to be read. Not in this life.

The landscape vibrato which binds us is what
has brought you to me.  
The landscape vibrato which opens in reading
and is in itself a landscape –
once it was yours, once it was mine.

How, when away
from each other, though never apart,
we piled and shifted,
each his own solitary sand dune,
and how with each passing year
lonely shrieks multiplied.

Can you substract them, the useless
years of your life;
substract from what? You who have never shut out
another’s voice on account of your own.

And then love: a delicate seam
stitched afresh in the crease of the old landscape;
precisely where
many others, whom I can barely still
recall, tried threading
their blunt bodkins with short life-span yarns.

What luck it was to meet you in this desert, you say.
What immense luck it was to be met, I say.
And then the silence against which you fully lean your ear.            

Nobody’s palms, except yours, can reach my body.
Nobody’s voice, except yours, can reach the tone of my key.


III.

And here, where the journey normally ends and
a vast glade of immovable stone emerges,
we are flying across the waters, the ocean
beleaguered by kisses;
we are travelling across the glade
whose edge we have already walked, this time
like tiny flowers carried on the gust of wind.

We travel each to himself and both together
across thousand small bends on the curve of our together dune
incessantly sliding from one end to the other;
the dune that soaks up every drop of dew,
small mirrors to our naked bodies.

And see here now a thin relief line in the landscape,
a thread separating and binding our bodies,
a signpost to establish the direction of the desert wind:
it can never turn into an impenetrable border.

And only ours are these empty hands, which
desert palms cast across the sand.
And only ours are these words
which draw dew from stone
and crumble rocks
we see everywhere and everywhere is our home.


IV.

And drawing parallels from the world we know is            
complete nonsense. And Braco, my love, today Danube                
flows into itself and I am thinking of you                                      
and of our two kitchen plants, which, you say,
have in the meantime perked up.

And there is no love outside the great dune if
each and every smallest part does not feel it.

And even here, in the north of the neighbouring country,
by the open vein of the sky-blue river leading the waters and fleets,
I can distinctly make out the tall, vigilant arch of our dune,
a wave turned to stone, having endured all the salt –
and is never shaken:

give it up
you’ll be back
. . . impossible even to consider –
and then, naturally, there’s rain, then passion
and the ground beneath our feet.

Dune

Dune

Allí
donde mi presencia es esperada me hago realidad.

(Jorge Pimentel, Balada para un Caballo)
                   


Ljubi Braco,


I.

Nobeno nebesno telo in ne zemeljsko,
nobeno drsenje med njima.
Nobena nespečnost s težko glavo nad ali pod posteljo.
Nobena abdikacija teritorija ali funkcije, nemogoče.

Tvoja stvarna roka, ki vodi k izviru moje
in prav ta stol tu, na katerem izmenoma sediva: zadostuje –
tout à sa place.

In tu si, tu sem, tu je vse,
kar potrebujeva,
tu sta
dve veliki duni, ki se zložita v eno
in potem dež in potem strast in potem tla pod nogami.

Dve veliki duni iz vsega znanega, a iz štirih konkretnih
samostojnih rok, štirih očes in dvajsetih prstov.

Dve duni iz neštetih zrn peska, ki se med seboj
dotikajo in komunicirajo vsako z vsakim posebej.

Duni, ki ju nežni objem ljubezni iz dveh lokov  sklene v krog.
Duni, ki ju nežni objem ljubezni iz dveh notranjih svetov preseli v enega.


II.

In potem prideš in se odkriješ v celem obsegu
In potem prideš in me bereš tam, kjer nikdar nisem
upala uspeti biti brana. Ne v tem življenju.

Vibrato pokrajine, ki naju združuje, je tisti, ki
te je pripeljal k meni.
Vibrato pokrajine, ki se človeku razkrije z branjem in je
sam pokrajina,
ki je nekoč bila tvoja in je nekoč bila moja.

Kako sva, oddaljena
drug od drugega, a vselej blizu
kopičila in prelagala
svoje samotne peščene sipine
in z vsakim letom je
število samotnih krikov bilo večje.

Jih lahko odšteješ, nerabna
leta svojega življenja;
od česa? Ti, ki nikdar nisi izključil
glasu drugega na račun svojega.

In potem ljubezen: droben šiv,
ki v pregib stare pokrajine doda novo;
prav tam, kjer
so mnogi drugi, ki se jih komajda še
spomnim, skušali vdevati svoja
okorna šila in slabo obstojne niti.

Kakšna sreča je v tej puščobi bilo srečati tebe, praviš
Kakšna neverjetna sreča je bilo naleteti na tebe, pravim.
In potem tišina, na katero v celoti prisloniš uho.

Nikogaršnje dlani, razen tvojih, ne dosežejo mojega telesa.
Nikogaršnji glas, razen tvojega, ne more doseči tona mojega ključa.


III.

In tu, kjer se potovanje običajno ustavi in
se odpre velika jasa nepremičnega kamenja,
zdaj potujeva preko luže, ki
je od poljubov oblegan ocean;
tu zdaj potujeva prek jase,
ki sva jo že obšla, tokrat
kot drobni cvetlici z nihaji vetra.

Potujeva vsak zase in oba skupaj,
prek nešteto malih zavojev na krivulji skupne dune,
ki se neprestano seli med tabo in mano;
dune, ki vpije sleherno kapljo rose,
v kateri se se zrcalita najini goli telesi.

In tu je zdaj tenka reliefna črta v pokrajini,
nit, ki deli najini telesi, a ju hkrati spenja,
kažipot, po katerem lahko določiš smer vetra v puščavi in
nikoli ne more postati neprehodna meja v prostoru.

In samo najini so ti listi praznih dlani, ki jih
palme v oazi rišejo v pesek.
In samo najine so te besede, ki
iz kamnov črpajo roso in
čeri zdrobijo v mivko,
ki jo srečava povsod in sva povsod doma.


IV.

In vleči analogije iz znanega sveta je tu več
kot nesmisel. In Braco, ljubezen, danes se Donava
na nekaterih mestih steka vase in jaz mislim
nate in na najini roži v kuhinji, ki
sta medtem, praviš, postali živahni.

In ni je ljubezni zunaj velike dune, če je
ne občuti vsak najmanjši delec posebej.

In celo tu, na severu sosednje dežele, ob
odprti žili sinje reke, ki vodi vodovje in ladjevje,
natančno vidim pozorni in visoki lok najine dune
kot okameneli val, ki je zdržal sol
and is never shaken:

odpovej se
povrneš se
. . . ni mogoče niti pomisliti –
in seveda  potem dež in potem strast in
potem tla pod nogami.