Astrid van Baalen

The other country

Dreamt B spoke to me

telling me he sees

clouds drift in a carton of milk.

Evening light he says

is a flock of birds

skimming the rooftops westerly.

***

The sky disappeared that night

and in its stead a permanent cloudbank

squats on rooftops.

In this cloudbank small luminescent

baubles hover which I guess

B continues used to be streetlights.

As he moves down each street

the streetlights sprain his shadow

dispersing me B says

running clear out from underneath me.

***

Across the border

the river flows through the rain

yellow comes after mustard seed

every leaf is a slipper thlupping on summer

Across the border

words are a second skin always asking for directions.

One foot easily forgets the other but that’s

neither here nor there. It isn’t one thing or the other.

Remember

B says

the border is just a line.

***

But what he really wants to tell me

is that across the border

I want to speak to everybody

and most of all yes

most of all I want to speak to you.

Because everywhere

B persists

picking up the carton of milk

and raising it to his lips

everywhere he went that night

I watched babies being born

their fists tightly balled

but in death B says

wiping the corners of his mouth

our hands are open.

Parakeet park

I am waiting. I go walk in the park.

Last year there were 1252 official executions worldwide.

Earlier today in Spain thirty-four year old

Angelo Santomera was arrested

for taking his mother’s head out for a walk.

I wonder why is memory painful?

A team of divers prized a bust of Caesar

from an underwater site in the river Rhone

‘the most ancient representation of Caesar alive.’

Is it just to push ahead?

I am waiting for a letter and I tramp on.

I pass the foreign parakeets screaming

in the birches since their great escape

from the aviary and let my thoughts roll over.

I remember as a child I believed sunlight

was made from fingers. And in woodwork

I too managed to confabulate a pencil box.

Or as Mr. Moore used to say

joints knocking about half helplessly half

something else: every form must always be fought.

goodbye goodbye

Building excavations. Children on their way home.

The light slowly revolving resembles fingers

kneading bread. I enter the shop on the corner and buy

a bunch of fresh mint and a bunch of coriander.

I am told the two don’t mix in the same plastic bag.

Which is when I remember the letter.