‘For words are persons’
In the cool room
with portraits under glass
a rose-coloured mandala
on the floor,
you listen to a whirlwind
of words: someone
is talking his way through
the dark; who
has left his footprints
outside the door, who
undresses before dinner
rises before sleeping, someone
who is scratching the palms
of his hands for light
that is not there, who
is beating a child beating
a child he has never been;
someone who has been twisting
his head from century to
century until it falls
into his lap.
From Vlaminck’s Tie (Auckland/Oxford UP, 1985)
© Michael Harlow
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