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Pēteris Draguns
(Latvia)

 

Poems by Peteris Draguns from his first book of poems “Poison”
translated by Margita Gailitis/Richard Kalnins

I know why dogs die.
Their souls howl wordlessly
at midnight’s empty moon.

I know life can be howled away
toward empty and speechless skies.

My dogs race breathless through the night
to cover up the empty moon.
I no longer remember that face in the mirror –
memory erases faces and sketches them anew.
Combed or tousled hair, toothful or toothless smiles,
the face of a child, serious, wet with tears.
Memory of touch returns.
Memory of faience china, memory of kitchen walls
plastered with labels.
My clumsy fingers obediently button a shirt, hurry
to nursery school.
Fingers with scissors cut circles out of colored paper but no circles appear.
Only tiny angular scraps. Touch doesn’t recognize sorrow.

I don’t remember the face. Everything builds up around me in a horn-hard husk.
Bright, yellow-brown light pours from the hollows of sunken eyes.
I unbraid the nerves at the tips of my fingers and re-assemble
my flesh
layer by layer
from ear lobes, smooth faces of children, dog bites, birds, heavy footprints
lightly touch the beginnings of pubic hair in a state of dumbfounded excitement.
A sculptor’s joy.

I don’t remember that face.
I create you from the nerves of my fingertips,
create you from scratch,
layer by layer
from a baby’s tender nape, lips, eyelashes, hair, firm and pulsing confidence
and the unending delight of creation.
A blind man’s joy.

Fingers stroke the face. A face that is not there.
Memory of touch returns.


* *

Angel obsessed wives deliver giants and dwarfs from under their hearts,
buy coffee, tooth brushes,
crack jokes about doctors and Poles.
A fat copper-haired boy with a red pencil
scribbles on the city map –
streets slowly disappear.
Giants , trolls, mermaids and werewolves
move into deserted places.
Only a little lost Japanese tourist
photographs the abandoned
red pencil.

I turned gray tonight –
the river retreated to its source,
in the palms of the riverbed, lonely buoys.

I can’t fall asleep tonight –
fish suffocate in open waters,
fountains don’t work.

The city dries out.
Dry tongues stick to the roof of mouths.
Roar of empty trams.
Pale girls, fever hot,
sell their daily flesh
for a drop of water.

I can’t get enough of cool calm:
I sleep alone with someone
whose name I don’t want to know.
Someone caresses me –
perhaps the river
comes to lull me to sleep


.It’s possible, that exactly at this moment some girl will sense
worlds crawl out of her core.
Maybe she’ll write letters in a non-existent language
on lined paper
or fall mute for eternity.
Maybe I’ll meet a sailor in a white shirt
with eyes flashing Morse code
a small scar on his chin
or at least his wife in a dress that flutters
giant flowers.
I’ll lose the ability to understand words
and the old absinthe drinker who sits among fallen trees in the park
the boy who whistles as he throws his fishing line into water
will become bloodless phantoms, empty rubble
crowding at the threshold of perception.
That moment when I forget my own name
I’ll achieve everything that anyone could possibly achieve.
 

Address :

Peteris Draguns
Unijas 58a-42
Riga, LV-1084
Latvia

Email :
peterisdraguns@literature.lv
or
draguns@literature.lv