Maya Sarishvili Poems

Before sleep, I remove
every sentence I've heard
since dawn like a thermometer
from the day's armpit
...

It won't work out this way,
Even if you tip over a whole forest,
You won't be able to find a single root anywhere.
...

Clothes come to the party,
they wear you underneath
and I'm afraid.
Roasted nuts
...

Now, the storm has arranged the insane,
set down a different order.
Those at the end are children, like rhymes.
...

There was one joy -
I sat on his lap
And into my eyes
He spilled juice from the orange peel.
Then he forgot me,
When he lit a cigarette
But I still could not walk very well,
I came sliding off his lap
And pressed my cheek to his shoe.
How different is the sound under the table
Of guests' voices,
Muffled sounds.
Muffled space.
Barely,
Barely had my eyelashes
Dried from the drenching of orange juice.
There was this one joy.
...

It won't work out this way,
Even if you tip over a whole forest,
You won't be able to find a single root anywhere.
The universe, when not fixed to the earth,
Is like a terrible dream.
Towns just lie about on the asphalt,
Seas are turned rigid
Wherever the earth topples over
And drift off afar -
Like colossal razors,
They slide uncontrollably.
And how eagerly all of us,
One by one,
Strip the old-fashioned veins from our bodies -
And very soon
Even the bees can't sting any more
Our porcelain children, which are meant to be set out
On the grand pianos.
...

Tell my husband
That this, my veil, grew from the skull,
Like fatty milk leaving crispy clefts.
The veil is chimney smoke.
And I am a dark chimney,
Or a hot veranda, onto which I raise up
These globules of milk fat - wasps -
In places from which there is no return, very high up . . .
Tell my husband, my mother's soul is a veil
That has flown off anxiously into my hair and sways me -
But this pain
Still lingers in my flesh, like a diamond bullet.
Tell my husband
That I shall set sugar pigeon squabs as a veil on the back of my head,
Or I shall use his letters as a covering instead of a veil,
When I grow so old and changed,
Like a flower unfurling in boiling water.
...

Again the honey has gone bad,
Taken into the house on the hem of a dress.
There's a hint of grey and a taste of chintz
And something sizzles magically inside: what?
I stick my wide-open eyes in,
But still can't see anything.
My rejoicing turns out to be nothing,
Adorning the days with banners of peals of laughter.
Only an unknowing sadness rises from me like smoke -
Stinking, choking,
And I can't say in anyone's presence
How my piteous sleep
Is lashed by razor-sharp shrieks,
Because every night
I wave myself about like a hatchet,
So that I can cut off as fast as possible
One more,
And again for something's sake,
Day that's been endured.
...

Nobody has got so scared as I, for some reason,
Nobody can have caught sight of melancholy exuded by the cells.
The cells of onion skins,
Cells of strands of hairs of fail-grade and top-grade pupils,
The whole class of cellular beings,
Including the view from the window . . .
Suddenly the protective layer has been stripped from the universe,
The path to the house becomes alien.
And the house with all its rooms.
But further off
Dubious alien parents
At dubious work . . .
What melancholy. What spell-casting.
Silent film seen under the microscope.
It's as though
God calls up something for your eyes
But still won't tell you the main thing.
...

The child's roughly used clothes.
Yes, that's what let me recognize clarity.
I shall come here, I said,
And silently they dropped me off there.
The things took off their headscarf,
So that I could see how big the ears had grown. Words I had heard
Were watching from there
And I recognized the room, too . . .
Two opaque children
Came up to my bed.
...