Excerpts I, VI & XXIV

these names and that’s how they found me. And as soon as they brought me I stayed for a while and then they took me it was a building of four wards large yards and rooms the rest of the people were there four wards separate not far from the sea.  And we would eat together sometimes and in the middle a log with cut branches on top over it an opening for the smoke, and ashes spread out on the floor black stains and ashes. And from the pores in the walls a little water would come and sometimes you could ask go upstairs and visit somebody else and when sometimes in the evening the power was out and we were sitting silent in the dark               but the wards which weren’t connected                      three four five among us fond of each other yet most of us there would die at some point all of us me too and then those who believed used to cry out others did not that right we had and we were in all those wards about a thousand and each day a man from personnel would come with a list and stand in the doorway right there in the entrance the main door to go in standing and shouting to them to come out and they would call them then take them from there and remained ten somewhere else fifteen depending on ward and they would take them to a special place from the evening of the day before and next day in the morning they would come and take them from there and you could hear at that time they were going in and calling their names hear those now saying goodbye to us we were about two thousand. And they were saying goodbye to us now I with all the others saying goodbye to us and the place sounding with their goodbyes. And after they came out they were going into a car and were going round the back there was the sea and they were going. And as soon as they would come out you could hear now people shouting and from that place in a car from the back to the sea it was not very far it was from the back where they dug pits and sometimes the water would reach there and the town was woken by this noise. And they would lower them down into the pit. This is what comes to my mind most of the time.  And to hear them cry as far as the last houses of the town where the wall was and everybody understood. And some used to get close to the pits and go back again and it wasn’t a secret it was under our feet but nobody. A whole town just about. And that moment indescribable moment when I went down past midnight and saw bringing them in that truck down to the sea.

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Extract 6

As long as a match stays alight. As much as you have time to see in the room that flares and fizzles out. The images holding, briefly, then fall. Some lines you manage, they are gone, another match, again. Pieces missing, empty pages, match, again. Comes across an unknown word and sticks in your mind.  And where are the dwelling places of the wicked. Ask those who pass by beside you. Match, some smudged parts again like those of the testament, then some of his pieces, then mine. The light so brief that you don’t have time to write, in the dark you can’t see if the page is blank. You write, a match, words falling on top of each other, another page, write, again a match, page blank, continue, another half-written page, read, the matches almost gone. You turn the pages by feel, finger them. Where you find written patches, you add your own beneath, you write in between. A match, read, your own together with the stranger’s, more again. As if you were speaking with someone. Match, pull on the cigarette try to read under the glow. No. Match, anguish that the objects go away again. As when I went away. Paths were all being guarded so that no one can get through. And thrown out now on the roads I open I shall be bound by them. Others escaped before dawn too. Without bond or limit, witnesses precious. A special subdivision of the Peregrini is constituted by the stateless. (Peregrini Dedicitii) Who although considered free

If I go out on the road I might be able to find 

as belonging to no country. 

Last match. 

Full Moon

     Hung on the tree                             dry

the light at the window

                                               sorts out                                                                                             

the forest to the west

 

our laughter – the best medicine

 

                to arm the last hands that

                                           drunk                                                                                                                           

   

                                                                                                 Of  the high tide                           the shadows

       

Suddenly drums bursting out

pick up and go don’t know to where

       

and silence                                            humbles me

before them

the early

 

tombs

   

- you tell me I send you because

to dig

                                                  

at the funerals

 

here they bury them at night

     

and you wait for me to grow old                        at                                              

   

within a day     

                                 at the fringes of the fire                       

                                                                                                                                                                                         

you met many

 

who plunged

 

                                               their breast

                                                        we found

butter eggs in the                  bread honey and later

                                                                                                              

were giving their daughters in marriage that day

 

and then were falling with a crash into                                                       

     

stalks that we cut and were eating just ra

 

of the ash

   

and in the      a glow of twilight around it and fire

flashing like lightning                                                              

 

mouths

           

Aesk – heyl – hopa (The hope of salvation is found in the wood, the demons rush out from the wood, or something like that)

     

I didn’t find and came back. I don’t remember how long nor from where. Dawn broke again.

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Extract 24

Nobody is coming after me. Surely they have forgotten about me. Nobody will ever come here to find me. He will never be able to find me. Nobody ever. And when I fled they didn’t even realise. They took no notice of me no one cared no one remembers. Now they will remember neither when nor how. Not even I. Tracks only, a hazy memory and those images when I look at what I have written, tracks of footprints in the mud before it starts raining again. Uncertain images of the road and thoughts mumbled words, and if you read them without the names you won’t understand, it could have been anywhere, and then I spoke with no one and those who saw me no chance that they remember me. Every so often a face seeming familiar, from another time, someone looked at you, you recognised him, no, a part of another on a stranger’s face. Or the rhythm of the steps that sound behind you, the rhythm of your own steps, which occasionally you think follow you, they stop when you stop, or for a moment you think he is coming behind you, or you think that someone is breathing behind the door and will now come in. And then nothing, and then back again, and you suddenly turn your head as if you had heard him. But no one. You are far away, no one knows you, no one wants to find you, no one is looking for you. And tomorrow you will be somewhere else still farther away, still more difficult yet, even if they would send someone. They don’t know the way and before they find out you have decamped somewhere else. They know how to search but they don’t know what way. And even if they set off from somewhere they will still be quite far. And they willnot be many. Perhaps just one. One is like all of them together. Same eyes that search, same mind that calculates the next move. Same legs that run same arms that spread wide. Ears straining to listen, nostrils over their prey. Always acted like that. Two eyes, two ears, two nostrils, two arms, two legs. The symmetry of the machine that pursues you. A net that thinks decides and moves ahead. The head a fishhook the body a belt. All the same. Me too. One behind the other. Forward back further back, to follow the road. And if you don’t know you run ahead anyway, because someone is always coming behind you. Sooner or later he comes. And sometimes there comes a hand taking you by the shoulder, or a worm that climbs up on your hand. It rolls on a pillow of saliva. Forward. And as it rolls it is growing and wrapping around you. A flat tongue on its saliva with two eyes that rise up to see you. Maybe not you, they look for a comfortable place to start from. Like him that, that night we were hungry, that had etched an open mouth on his stomach. Likewise this stomach has a mouth, it is a mouth, about to open. From there you go somewhere else, on the inner road opening up, in the twists of the gut, there of course you are unconscious by now, unconscious you take the road of return and when you wake up they have brought you inside there again.

 

See details of book:
Z213: EXIT