Between I love and I don't love is enough time
for a cigarette. What would happen to the lungs
without questions? If only two rooms
were enough, furniture as a semantic
rescue, books sprouting on shelves,
frost that you know is outside
the window. This is not the whole world, the truth
is unprepared, like an apartment
when you move. But. Oh yes, there are
such short words, useful
when a sentence develops too fast,
like a fetus. We even chose the name.
What joy in the compliance of language
that I call my own, so difficult to share
with silent ones. A curtain from behind which
someone watches someone else's happiness and misfortune.


Translated by Frank L. Vigoda
(Circumference, Nowy Jork, 2005)