Nothing in this room is mine.
When I close my eyes the walls move apart, slant
into thin surfaces; so quickly do they change.
Ants pull the woodwork apart, the distance between
things lessens. In the garden, the tiny tract of an
imaginary country is getting smaller. Stems transport dark sounds.
At night the paths vanish behind glazed doors;
slide over unknown horizons; the balcony, the pavement
and the street. Cocoons of plucked leaves collect in heaps
beneath the shadows. An echo cracks in the marble, flows along the corridor.
The sky wheeled through separated roofs, clouds hurried.
I see: the lawn is changing; ever weightier pillars come nearer,
within reach. Between them green or blue fabric
sinks into water. Deserted places die quickly.
Marijana M. asks: Coffee or tea? Violet raisins
shine pictured on an empty saucer.
Mistletoe grows upward in her steps, dwindling the stones.
On the stairs, ceramic flowers. Portraits of ancestors
darken in their gilt while in Venetian glass
the twilight ebbs. Cupids like orchids, their wings
spread among the shelves.
As the clouds shift I feel a blueness: the space in the
birch bark is measureless.
Crystalline leaves in the grass like a grain of rice, the wind
blows away fine fragments of wet flowers that journey about the earth.
At the picture's height cities wide open, raised benches,
glazed parks, greenery of the river.
Birds are sleeping, concealed behind the clouds.
We sit beneath what was a family tree
pictured long ago. The past rises between us with words:
Like a house, the isolation of an extinct tongue.

Translation: 2007, Kim Burton