The Hiatus

In danger, the holothurian splits itself in two:
it offers one self to be devoured by the world
and, in its second self, escapes.

Violently it divides itself into a doom and a salvation,
into a penalty and a recompense,
into what was and what will be.

In the middle of the holothurian’s body a chasm opens
and its edges immediately become alien to each other.

On the one edge, death, on the other, life.
Here despair, there hope.

If there is a balance, the scales do not move.
If there is justice, here it is.

To die as much as necessary, without overstepping the bounds.
To grow again from a salvaged remnant.

We, too, know how to split ourselves
but only into the flesh and a broken whisper.
Into the flesh and poetry.

On one side the throat, on the other, laughter,
slight, quickly dying down.

Here a heavy heart, there non omnis moriar,
Three little words, like three little plumes of light.

We are not cut in two by a chasm.
A chasm surrounds us.

- Wislawa Szymborska

Raining with endless gems,
The creature lives to ignore
The senseless that it abhors
To throw sunshine back and forth.

But time and time again,
It shrinks to see itself.
And all the same depress its livid mind
Into the endless pit of its chest.

For creatures are messy things.
And things are endless void.
And creatures fruiting other creatures,
Is senseless death and birth.

To live by and by with this,
Is why they were born.
So, day and day with this,
The creature goes on and on.

But you are the moon,
That shines with endless beauty.
Unquestionable, unfathomable,
On top of everything else.

And you are the stars,
That live with pointed shapes.
Hurting the imagination.
Living and dying beyond reach.

And then there was me,
An abomination of the creature.
Birthed by your silken skin,
Killed by your apathy!