Some Old Poetry

(There was Still Inside Her)
From Earth to Parcel for Paul Celan

There was still inside her, and
they broke.
They broke and broke, and as
the seconds crawled on, their fever. And they did not take
dwell,
that, so they thought, needed cast;
that, so they thought, bore all this.

They broke and thought nothing more;
they grasped blithely their hilts, uncovered no slip,
knew no halting utterance.

They broke.

There came soon a tear, there shortly came shred,
none of the favoured came.
He breaks, she breaks, and the part also breaks;
and the trouncing here snivel whispers: they broke.

O two, o three, o four, o'r her.
When will they go, when they've been through her all?
O he breaks, and he breaks, and he breaks through to maw,

and the courtesan on their fingers falls.

Show me the drenched howling babe,

the one that sweats
and quivers long before he speaks: and feed from drought,
milk for your too pursed lips,
dribbling liquid unhinged and warm,
and slow as breast’s pulse
through your spineless ear.

Show me the gashes, the scrapes, so that I might graze
on your skin, under damp covers where sound hums:
pillowed scripts, fingered marks; nose tip to shoulder blade
and fastened squints; tossing sheets and accusations
through stuffed holes.

You whisper to hell with the romantic, the soft
underskin of my thigh gelled in your palm,
and the stuffy foyer around our bed collapsing.
And then you sigh all the way to hell with the things you’ve read
in an old blue chair
under a dim orange light.

and I listen through the hum of the radiator
and the weakening light.