When you thank me for my smiling hands,
for a flower growing in my eyes, for a quotation from
Chesterton, or for the secret longing to do up one of your
buttons,
I always remain silent.
How could I say "it's nothing" if these gifts are "all"?
Little freckles that come back with age,
dew that the sky distills for that bee
to drink.
Like the girl who comes to the window to hang out
a red dress and looks at the workman laying concrete
in the house next door or at the scaffolding supporting him
twenty metres above the street.
How would they say "It's nothing"?
But now I also want to say "thank you" because you have
turned
the waiting into a fine washing-line for my best dresses
and I can write honey from thirst and calm, and doing chores
I feel that stab of vertigo and I want to live.
And don't say "it's nothing".
Perhaps "sorry" will fit this space for formalities—
that's what I always say, and you stay silent.
Sorry because the pain of not having you never ends,
for the cloud of hope you can so easily plough,
for the pessimism you melt, like a sugar lump,
with the universal humidity that makes great things
soft, and small things lofty, sliding down toboggans of green
leaves.
(It's irrelevant to try to guess why this poem
was originally called "Sewing")

Translated by Anna Crowe