Year’s Middle

Iron blades cut through the sand and heavy coal,

entangled in forest roots—chain-link by chain-link,

the hot middle of the year is assembled

and baked in the kiln of the boiling sun;

the cores of the links grow together.

At the very bottom, between June and July,

you’ll see how lindens and drivers’ cabs stand still in the dark,

in the quiet urban side streets with their tiny groceries,

and then you’ll walk through the flimsy interseason,

which, after momentary vacillation, can throw you

to any side;

there are always two roads

from this deepest hollow, and having easily swung your body,

you can move against the stream

and break through to the winter and the sources,

when everything didn’t seem so inalienable,

when you could change everything;

someone covers the channels of your oblivion

with odorous waterweed,

stones and smoke,

and you try to catch those fumes

inside yourself

till you reach unconsciousness.

Year’s middle is a river in lowlands, right before its delta,

when the alien, stirring, and briny

smell of different water forces its way up the riverbed,

to fill the pores of the alien moisture;

if you want, you can also

feel these gelid streams from your future

and foresee what’s there, behind the nearest hills;

you can peep into the realms where all navigation vanishes

and wounds open, from silence, on apples,

where nothing dares to begin

without your presence.