1. Is this a town? Houses and tram
touch the street quite separately.

This an awning. A marble column.
A hair salon smelling of juice.

Here is a swimming pool. A glass front.
A shopping street where traffic doesn't fit.

She doesn't bend, wading through the paddling pool
and touching the crown of the child with her fingers.

At each movement on the photocopier
the supermarket door slides open.

So a passer-by explains what passing is:
a town you leave while you are staying there.
2. No one is silent for long in Ernie's Bar.

The owner's girlfriend dances
in the middle of the joint, reflects
rainbow-like in the clasp that lights up
and narrows her waist. All revolves around her.

The silver above the bar on the mirror
the projection through the smoke flower arrangements
in the window the slide screen half open
on loops low curtains, neighbours

going timidly past.
3. Look at the blood in that tray of lamb's liver.
The olive oil in tins. The ispanak in a crate.

The TV screen that's bobbing in the canal.

Two people having a talk -
their foreheads resting against each other.

On the man by the slivered ice between
moustache and beard a paper sticks
while he digs into the tobacco.

Watch how the blood washes
off the flesh.
4. It isn't true
you're just standing
still by a window
the place near-perfect
as if the image came
because you came past.

You must be cold
to show something
in words you explain
the glass to the street
the man and his paper
temperament.

Translation: Paul Vincent