Sylt II

The wind that makes your hair grow faster

opens a child’s mouth full of strawberry and sand.

Slow and sure

on the scales of the ocean

the child’s head outweighs the sun.

Inside of the wind—

                                       a blister of a church,

its walls thicker than the space from wall to wall

where the wind shifts shade and light

like two rival chess pieces

or two unmatched pieces of furniture.

Inside of the church—such a stillness

that when a feather floats down in a fist of dust

it becomes a rock by the time it hits the ground.

Organ pipes glint like a cold radiator,

contained in a case of a carved tree, its branches

tied up with a snake.

Organ pedals, golden and plump, are the tree’s only fruit.

It is all about the release of weight:

the player crushes the pedals like grapes underneath his feet.

My body, like an inaccurate cashier, adds your weight to itself.

Your name, called into the wind,

slows the wind down.

When a body is ripe, it falls and rots from the softest spot.

Only when a child slips and drops off a tree,

the tree suddenly learns that it is barren.