78 Loneliness poems

The nightclub’s neon light glows red with anxiety as I wait on the turning lane. Cars blur past, their headlights white as charcoal. I trust each driver not to swerve. I trust each stranger not to kill me and let me cross the shadow of his smoky path. Trust is all I have for patrons at the bar: one man offers me a line, one man buys the kamikaze, another drinks it. Yet another wraps his arm around my waist. I trust him not to harm my body as much as he expects his body to remain unharmed. One man asks me to the dance floor, one asks me to a second drink, another asks me home. I dance, I drink, I follow. I can trust a man without clothes. Naked he conceals no weapons, no threat but the blood in his erection. His bed unfamiliar, only temporarily. Pillows without loyalty absorb the weight of any man, betray the scent of the men who came before. I trust a stranger’s tongue to tell me nothing valuable. It makes no promises of truth or lies, it doesn’t swear commitments. The stranger’s hands take their time exploring. Undisguised, they do not turn to claws or pretend artistic skill to draw configurations on my flesh. They are only human hands with fingertips unsentimental with discoveries, without nostalgia for what they leave behind. I trust this stranger not to stay inside me once he enters me. I trust him to release me from the blame of pleasure. The pain I exit with no greater than the loneliness that takes me to the bar. He says good night, I give him back those words, taking nothing with me that is his. The front door shuts behind me, the gravel driveway ushers me away. The rearview mirror loses sight of threshold, house, sidewalk, street. Driving by the nightclub I pass a car impatient on the turning lane. My hands are cold and itch to swerve the wheel, to brand his fender with the fury of my headlights. But I let this stranger live to struggle through the heat and sweat of false affections, anonymous and borrowed like the glass that washed my prints to hold another patron’s drink.

I’m eating a little supper by the bright window. The room’s already dark, the sky’s starting to turn. Outside my door, the quiet roads lead, after a short walk, to open fields. I’m eating, watching the sky—who knows how many women are eating now. My body is calm: labor dulls all the senses, and dulls women too. Outside, after supper, the stars will come out to touch the wide plain of the earth. The stars are alive, but not worth these cherries, which I’m eating alone. I look at the sky, know that lights already are shining among rust-red roofs, noises of people beneath them. A gulp of my drink, and my body can taste the life of plants and of rivers. It feels detached from things. A small dose of silence suffices, and everything’s still, in its true place, just like my body is still. All things become islands before my senses, which accept them as a matter of course: a murmur of silence. All things in this darkness—I can know all of them, just as I know that blood flows in my veins. The plain is a great flowing of water through plants, a supper of all things. Each plant, and each stone, lives motionlessly. I hear my food feeding my veins with each living thing that this plain provides. The night doesn’t matter. The square patch of sky whispers all the loud noises to me, and a small star struggles in emptiness, far from all foods, from all houses, alien. It isn’t enough for itself, it needs too many companions. Here in the dark, alone, my body is calm, it feels it’s in charge.

If no one ever marries me,— And I don't see why they should, For nurse says I'm not pretty, And I'm seldom very good— If no one ever marries me I shan't mind very much; I shall buy a squirrel in a cage, And a little rabbit-hutch: I shall have a cottage near a wood, And a pony all my own, And a little lamb quite clean and tame, That I can take to town: And when I'm getting really old,— At twenty-eight or nine— I shall buy a little orphan-girl And bring her up as mine.

along the street the outcast pauses his earring makes him special a useless worker of the disgraceful he’s stood at the crossroads of  years the traffic light contains three colors but none give him permission to cross I live OK and work at present as word processor (from the root “cess”) and in the process wander or hold court with whacked youngsters you just can’t get used to death you drain your life toiling for some treasure you’ll die like a darling you won’t protest and out of decorum pretend to see the light die just like the rest of us and to your relatives’ delight agonizing confess you know where to find the gold Translated from the Russian

Empty empty empty so many empty chairs everywhere. They look charming in van Gogh’s paintings. I quietly sit on them and try to rock but they don’t move — they are frozen by what’s breathing inside them. Van Gogh waves his paintbrush — leave leave leave there’s no funeral tonight. He looks straight through me, and I sit down in the flames of   his sunflower like a piece of clay to be fired. Translated from the Chinese

spider on the cold expanse of glass, three stories high rests intently and so purely alone. I’m not like that!

Deola passes her mornings sitting in a cafe, and nobody looks at her. Everyone’s rushing to work, under a sun still fresh with the dawn. Even Deola isn’t looking for anyone: she smokes serenely, breathing the morning. In years past, she slept at this hour to recover her strength: the throw on her bed was black with the boot-prints of soldiers and workers, the backbreaking clients. But now, on her own, it’s different: the work’s more refined, and it’s easier. Like the gentleman yesterday, who woke her up early, kissed her, and took her (I’d stay awhile, dear, in Turin with you, if I could

Toward evening, the natural light becomes intelligent and answers, without demur: “Be assured! You are not alone. . . .” But in fact, toward evening, I am not convinced there is any other except myself to whom existence necessarily pertains. I also interrogate myself to discover whether I myself possess any power by which I can bring it about that I who now am shall exist another moment. Because I am mostly a thinking thing and because this precise question can only be from that thoughtful part of myself, if such a power did reside within me I should, I am sure, be conscious of it. . . . But I am conscious of no such power. And yet, if I myself cannot be the cause of that assurance, surely it is necessary to conclude that I am not alone in the world. There is some other who is the cause of that idea. But if, at last, no such other can be found toward evening, do I really have sufficient assurance of the existence of any other being at all? For, after a most careful search, I have been unable to discover the ground of that conviction—unless it be imagined a lonely workman on a dizzy scaffold unfolds a sign at evening and puts his mark to it.

Speak of the whistle of Atacama the wind erases like snow the color of that plain i.   The Desert of Atacama soared over infinities of deserts to be there ii.  Like the wind feel it pass whistling through the leaves of the trees iii.  Look at it become transparent faraway   and just accompanied by the wind iv.  But be careful: because if ultimately the Desert of Atacama were not where it should be the whole world would begin to whistle through the leaves of the trees   and when we'd see ourselves in the same never   transparent   whistles in the wind swallowing the color of this pampa

Arid plains do not dream No one has ever managed to see Those chimerical pampas i.   The landscapes are convergent and divergent in the Desert of Atacama ii.  Over the convergent and divergent landscape Chile is convergent and divergent in the Desert of Atacama iii.  That's why what's there never was there and if it were to stay where it is it would see its own life turn around until being the chimerical plains   deserted enlightened   fading away like them iv.  And when the convergent and divergent landscapes of the Desert of Atacama unfold themselves all of Chile will have been the life beyond   because unlike Atacama they are already extending themselves like a dream the deserts of our own chimera over there in these plains of hell