Overgrown Hedges
for a childhood friend

Coming back, find
the lawn, the driveway
dense with carpetweed--

Look over there
            by your neighbor’s shed!
Right over there that
partly buried drainage pipe
where you would joke
Pennywise the clown killed
late-to-dinner children
            as if we lived
in Stephen King’s Maine--

We played wiffle ball
near the hedge. Mosquitoes
pricked our arms—itchy
welts polka-dotting.
                     
The twenty years old
mailbox leans.
This yard forgets us.





"Overgrown Hedges" Variation


There were nights like this
            when children, too,
went home before it got
too dark, before
the light retreated, curtain
drawing back
to welcome other days
in other places. Children,
if you don’t go home
before it gets too dark
you might be lost, your
joy turned into sorrow.
Just go home.





Washing the Corpse
by Rainer Maria Rilke
translation by Domenic J. Scopa

They had grown used to him. But when
the kitchen lamp began to burn,
so restless in the dark, the stranger seemed
altogether strange. They scrubbed his neck,

and since they didn’t know his fate,
they lied until they made it up−
all while washing him. One had to cough,
and while she coughed she left the vinegar sponge

dripping on his face. For a second
there was a pause. A few drops fell
from the stiff-wash brush, while his horribly
bloated hand was trying to inform the room
that he no longer thirsted.

And he proved it. With a little cough,
as if embarrassed, they began to work
more vigorously now, so that their crooked
shadows rolled and squirmed across

the patterned wallpaper as if entangled
in a net, until they finished washing.
The night in the uncurtained window-frame
was pitiless. And one without a name
lay clean and naked there, and gave commands.

 



We’ve Known…
by Dimitri Prigov
translation by Domenic J. Scopa

We’ve known since ancient days
That man is stronger than death
But nowadays, believe me−
He’s stronger than life as well

Life tempts and beckons him
But he only flips it off
Nothing tempts him−
He lives in poverty and celebrates
Since he is stronger than everything