Smoke

It’s smoke, the star, a broom
of nothing but smoke, its light; of dusky water
its serpent cloud, its jingle bell.

And someone shudders to feel himself
half drunk, half by himself, half loved,
and if I’m the one, at halves completely.

For when with a gesture of my hand I turn
the corner I had in mind, and when it’s raining
and there’s something I’m waiting for. some miracle
in the gray streets, at the wrong time, and Pm
staring.
I find my mirror, lace to ravaged lace,
and each goes wide with laughter.

And thus they call it. refer to it as mine
my house, my food, my little stove:
a face of smoke, a den of smoke, a tiger
of glittering smoke, jewel tiger,
jewel of sonorous smoke, a coat of arms.

Perhaps it you understood, if you knew
perhaps, in what direction — then the dove
of the spirit would rise triumphant
over the serpent, and the most immaculate
conception of the warrior crowned
with blood to the taste of his throat.

And a sun hung crosswise there for my salvation,
and a necklace guillotined and a string
of skulls, and I’d have
the ear of corn with its yellow teeth
and the hungry orbits.

The thing we are, you were; before
I sipped my blood from your tablespoon,
you were, already, the thirst that multiplies
by exactly zero the chant of happiness
and rescues the choleric scepter.

I — what’s to say; or what orders give, what
charges,
what should I leave, with hunger for all my inheritance;
and the hunger of my brother, the half hunger
of my father’s poor little parents, of my grandsons.

Next to the war my house was situated;
its coat of arms burns hoarsely in the rain.
All is a land in blossom under the smoke,
all is a cornfield of fire.

Is the battle too. Not a man to come
will understand, perhaps, that my heart has strength
to turn back round; is sending forth
its plumage all of flame, its scarlet tree,
its train with the posthumous scales a-glitter.