The two windows on my wall
watched me sleep
What could be more dangerous
than rain at night
Got up, if I was up today, and
the whole house disappears into rain
Old Poem
Alone at the window or the door of my house
Alone turning the corner in a crowd sometimes
Alone in front of my mirror
I am ugly alone
I make ugly sounds
Listen, I sound like a trumpet
Madam I am king
Bowing alone all my dust smiling,
covered with dust
alone in my room or at the angle of a wall
I am dented all over
as with warts eating or in my bed alone
O I am good and ugly, watching alone
before my mirror
I am a toad and I only eat frogs
Madam, I am king of the toads
Hopping along on the floor of the dark hall closet
I knock over the wet umbrellas
Sleep in old rubbers lying around the floor
Sitting in my rubbery puddle
Sometimes I alone give a croak like a choir of trumpets
When the dream of the sunlit world transformed
into the real night he learned
what those who died have always known
But what they knew they knew too late
What he knew was the dream of death
the real dream coming much too early
David Ball’s poetry chapbooks include New Lulu (2011) and In Cities (2001); his poems have appeared in Action, Yes; Locus Solus, The World and many other journals. His translations include the prizewinning Darkness Moves: An Henri Michaux Anthology, poems by James Sacré, work by Tristan Tzara, Valéry Larbaud, Pablo Picasso and others. Recent translations: Jean Guéhenno, Diary of the Dark Years 1940-1944 and two amazing novels, Lola Lafon’s We Are the Birds of the Coming Storm and Laurent Mauvignier’s The Wound (both with Nicole Ball).
gobbet 