first snowfall

as if I hid my hands
with gnarled fingers
under my grandma’s mohair shawl
the same winter after winter on her shoulders

and my finger bones don’t stay wise
like cuckoo offspring in a deserted nest
they tremble starving
to pick again that rose so perfidiously red
climbing the house pillar

I order them to stay straight
as far as for me there is a cross
or a point
and then another line

Slaked Lime

I powder myself in the mirror
dressed in Pierrot clothes
my skullcap over ears and eyes

it has been snowing so much
that I can’t choose between black and white
waiting for the spring
to embrace tightly a young birch
to take along with me the trees’ illness

I won’t mourn the yesterdays
like an embalmed mummy
in a hidden room
the sun will avoid my traces
a human still alive
in a leper’s rags

Snow on the Grate

on a starless night
I released the darkened hemp
from the spinning wheel of dreams

I knit on a black thread onion bulbs
gold and red
day and night knot after knot
there is neither green light for tears
nor medicine leaf over eyelids

lately I learned that tears
are vultures’ tongues gulping
from within sewn wounds
until fresh blood oozes again
I dare to cry rarely
only when I chop onion with the same knife
that scratched my name when I was a child

Sundays became working days
I’m knitting eyes closed colored roots
for a harsh winter
the dust is falling from bells
over the snow I was afraid
to leave my footprints in
.

Slowly Snowing

it’s still snowing,
votive lights are burning
with unequal heartbeats,
silence is clotted
like dry salt grains on the shore,
midday crickets go to sleep
in a peaceful cradle

a seagull’s wing
drops a living ivory shadow,
the sky is toppling down a sea
with stifled waves,
the earth hardly breathes
as if it were raising mountains,
winter’s aorta pulse is slow

life recovers from impatience,
hourglass’ roads are narrow
world’s heart comes through,
its bud crests shaking
this light’s rough skin