Fifty years have passed
since I started living in those dark towns
- John Ashbery
Five years have passed since I moved
to this bleak middle of nowhere,
and I still can’t find my way
from “Cheap Books” to “Super Used-Clothing.”
In the morning, out in front, I pass
strangers with exhausted faces.
In the evening, I listen to gas lamps
beating against the panes like moths.
More and more things fall
out of my hands, and my stomach
has taken on the shape of a ripe pear.
But what if this poem were about you?
Would you want me to describe
what I’ve left out? The drunken arias
sung till unconscious dawn? Bread with headcheese,
wrapped in yesterday’s paper?
No, let’s leave it the way it is in films…
The main character pirouettes so much
the linoleum squeaks in his studio-apartment.
Oh, what a central heating refund he got!
The cheerful Tivoli garden looks at him
through the holes in gap-toothed blinds.
Translated by Piotr Florczyk