1
When we expose ourselves to language
music grows too
And the other way around, in continual
escalation. A river
shining, rising in its length
on up into space There
there is a sun, cloud
moon, stars
And a growing city
across a growing plain, growing waters
The river has a voice
I have a voice as well, it rises
from the lungs of my throat,
ignites the sky
ignites the city’s
growing houses
Fire Breathing that grows
2
This is the time of the
intensified terror
not as yet comprehended
in its fullness It keeps
coming back
wave after wave, rising sinking
eradicating itself
and thereby
every heart Silent roads, people
waiting in solitude at bus stops
Roads swept clean,
crystal slowly crumbling
It was a long time ago
architecture’s growing dream
was possible The world of dimensions
was opening into
another sea,
annihilation on a
previously unknown scale
The road along the Fontanka
nearly deserted
while the clouds
moved swiftly towards
darkening night
Nothing repeats itself Intensity
assumes other forms
Some of those
who openly oppose the system
live now in mental hospitals
or in the camps The others wait
But only one possibility exists,
regardless of where you are,
to be free
No matter what the tongue may speak
No matter what the heart may tell
A face gazes at me
from the inmost place
of evil’s darkness
strangely broken
It would sell me
for a trifle
A tattooed hand
I watch the face go into
his God, into the house
of liturgy within,
its icons averted, totally
white Murder’s
two eyes
hovering aloft
or in the depths below
No road exists
In the inmost
corner his mother
kneels on a threadbare mat
the smallest one, the smallest body She
prays the greatest prayer
for him
Every combination
exists
The child grew up to be
bigger than his mother
went into
nethermost whiteness
for a pittance
The Kirghiz
girl smiles at me
in the underground
where I sit
ever so slightly turning away
I quickly apportion all responsibility
into unequal shares
I don’t want to convert them
into another currency
I am no ones ’s friend
3
The nethermost
cannot be degraded
I can’t think of my father
as degraded
Death took him
I imagine
him smiling
even in death
I see his face
below mine
I can sink
even lower
The ever renewing
motions of suffering
burn ever deeper
in the rays of pain
in the motions of pain
in a face
from under
My father never hated
That is what I remember about him
There is where he gives me his blessing
4
Rays from the human beings go
straight in
to an invisible centre, there
unite And music responds
Every throat becomes a voice
in a growing house
Only in seeing is the sun an eye Everything
is then pressure from God
But that’s not enough God
is incomplete, reposing only
in us, in our motions
And we move as errant wayfarers
Our darkness is God’s darkness
And our light is God’s light
5
All of these souls
suffused in light
From below, from above, from
every direction As though they were borne
by light rays As though the floor’s wood
were light
Our light are shadows
In God’s growing darkness
The sun is darkness
in our growing light
God’s rays reach us
from a centre
that is everywhere
Our blinding dazzle is blinded
We are in the light
that eradicates the light
6
What is God to me?
The invisible face,
reposing The
invisible aiming point
that is everywhere
That which dissolves
the callousness of my heart
That which makes my intellect’s
fragile fetters
snap
In God’s presence both
humbleness
and the lack of humbleness
I don’t try to fit in
What right do I have
to speak of God?
No such right exists
7
Whom do I dare meet now
among the human kind?
It is as though
I were human
long ago As though
it were some other time when
everything was different
The possible moves
like a totalitarian
system, a
body, full of
blinding wounds
I lick the wounds, they taste
of pus, old
blood, rot
My skin is rotting
Cats
are an essential part
of the system
When hubris
goes as far as in the case of S…
it turns into humbleness
It is hard to take in
without brain
seizures You practice
again and again
not-being-human
God’s Ghastliness
Nor is there any respite
for me
The punishment is relentless
It is an
absorption into God
without mercy
Reason’s dogged
holding to
the unknown Otherwise
no reason is possible
But the known And emotion’s
surrender
to it Ghastly
8
I wait now for
the invisible face
that will come
to take away every face
They knock on my door
with white faces
They call me on the phone, want
me to line up
on their side
as if for nothing
since justice is theirs
I obtain for myself a period of grace
by hiding out
I am not able to hide my face
9
The bright voice that comes
and talks to me
with all the heart’s warmth, chill
The voice has no props, no cords
It moves about the heart
with the faces of all souls
There is no floor, no bottom
But then
there is no roof either, nothing
sealed above, nor
in any other direction
Those who are downtrodden
stamp out their dance
Is there also
a life in taking things back Drank
of annihilation, was
the child of
bright pus
then displayed, dried
and with two heads
in some autocrat’s vision
But I combine myself
into a new body, another one
Don’t explain! Be silent!
There is nothing to explain
in a whisper
Lips touches lip,
your fragrance is tranquil
Love corrodes
like an endless balm
waking the dead
or the nearly dead
Do I hide myself from all that? No!
Only the light exists
and fragile bodies
crumbling from within
because of the light The only thing that heals—
The heart’s goodness Whose? Yours
And the prayer thy wouldst
watch over me And stay with me
One day the light will break
though it be eternal
Otherwise there would be no light
10
Voice to face: mother
Mama! Waving at a distance
So that you will come
Searching every house, lanterns
The only light The voice rises
an organ’s great columnar sound, within
the house of the womb There where
the embryo grows, fastened
since then to the membrane of life
It isn’t that you are pushed away
You push death away
The voice is alone in the universe
It can be very quiet or it can ring out
The mother of all sexes
I cry out to you like grass
I am the foliage of all trees
sparkling in the light’s wind
The face turns then
as in a dream Becomes
a disc, a knife’s edge Like a
cutting aureole
But you are no longer able to respond
Everything can turn round
Everything has its
topological conversion
That will not prevent you
No dream will prevent you
No dream within what is real will prevent
Now you are being born or being resurrected
from the dead
Am I too
in the womb of the dead?
Anything is possible
That which is possible and that which is
impossible represents no boundary
You move swift across an infinite
face
The light rises from the ground
The light radiates from the dark earth
I call you forth now It doesn’t
matter
if I get hoarse Do you
hear my silence too, mama?
banging on all objects
11
Each one of us in his sealed wind
towards a single center
Open, only where
the flowing-inward
is possible Open your heart
to God! And then start moving,
dancing
in a motionless movement
invisible to everyone
Only my remorse is alive
It is quite dry, tranquil
Clumsy, imitating too
those who stand
about me
Because
the conditions in all this
are the same Can I
leave my own past
behind? Are
my tears able
to flow? Like
something flowing toward God
that it may receive
his own flowing reciprocal
osmosis, between
communing vessels?
The eye of God
is no concrescence!
It shines right through the sun
right through the darkness of stars
What are we doing to
other souls?
The same as we do
to our own
If I let myself down
I let down others as well and the opposite
is true too We twist and turn
within the crystalline structure of God
which is our limitation’s vision
It results both in hubris
and humbleness There is nothing
in between and perhaps
no liberation, no neither or nor
We just don’t know Not until
we have been there And left it
With no sin, no salvation Shall
we therefore seek sin? No!
Then there’s no salvation
Calculated grace
is itself necessity
Thus save us from grace
Hypocritical piety is the most repulsive of all
Rather Satan instead!
And with Satan’s compassion
the Gaussian bell bursts from within
I have transgressed your commandments
I do it with nearly every step I take
also ascending the mountain
ever steeper in its rise
The quickest step
from zero to infinity
Ultimate clarity is totally black
I am confessing my sin
also with your lips
That is when the eyes soften like the eyes of an animal
12
The feeling of revolt; against—
The first integral
and then
every integral’s integral
Here is the aiming point, the current
Also in the congealed time
The overpowering crystal of the All
will flow in the end like water
We will be long gone by then
All will be long gone, all revolts
But this doesn’t help
We are those who bear the irredeemable
to the unendurable, its weight
To what also consoles, is gentle
That is when revolt will return
turn inward, in infinite directions
Then there will be no aiming point, though still
a flowing Revolt against revolt
and over again Until nothing
cancels everything out And we leave
And also in time, helpless
within this paradox We exist
and we do not exist But we once existed
Thus we pray to the God of nothing, as though
he existed For it was he who
gave us birth, like a woman
We all stand, turning in the same direction
The face of pain smiles at us,
tranquil, black The son too is black
A pile of bones from the rag heap
Crimson Forgiveness of all
13
Shamefully, furtively
I make my return
The man we were looking for
in the house on the Fontanka
was already in a mental hospital
100 miles beyond Leningrad
though alone
is a flame
above
the broad waters
and only just discernible
The water is cold
The body follows, dancing,
The movements of the vessel
The storm too blows
with a stiff wind
straight into
the eye of the sun
at the end of the Prospect
From there fleets issued forth
From there power still proceeds
The deep voice sings
No cosmocrat exists the Cosmos
governs itself
I want to count the spots on the egg
I slice it with a knife
Lark’s eggs Gull’s eggs and the
small, blue, brown-spotted egg
Envoi
Down towards the centre of darkness
I give you now
what I have, or what I do not have
You will be given my Nothing
If you are able to respond, I will
get what you don’t have, or what you have
It will come as light, bitter
or sweet, clear
And the light and the darkness
are the same thing
And happiness comes, and pain
with no difference, no annihilation
translation from Swedish GSW
© Göran Sonnevi 2007
translation © The Copenhagen Review 2007