Tenderly
It is so hard to dance on a frozen
Surface in alternating flashes of red,
Yellow, and green, after a night out, in new
Shoes with slippery soles; alone with the ghosts
Of run-over midgets, in Berlin,
Moscow, Paris, or Philadelphia. With their small hands
The midget souls grab my laces: come
To us, they say pulling to every side
Of the world in every degree
Of the compass: now green, now yellow, now
Red. They are not dancing. Not
They: they are just pulling
My laces tenderly, as if they wanted to untie
Every step, minute, and second.
But they are just ghosts of midgets. There are
No midgets. The slippery shoes are what counts,
And the frozen surface of the street gone mad.
Numbers
A child is dying: two-years old,
Seven-years old, eighteen,
Twenty, forty-something,
Let us say seventy —
It is always a child
Dying, numbers don't matter,
It is just the magic of numbers.
___________________
Apotheosis of Music
translated by Frank L. Vigoda
World Poetry 2025
