barbara korun

White Room

A room, then, a white room,
walls bright with lime wash,
white shutters, bare wooden floor;
a bed in this empty room
and, in the far corner, two rucksacks.
Through the wide-open window
the smell of pines breaking in.

Rasp of cicadas dying away.
A bed in this room, this white room,
a couple sprawled there in blank heat,
gazing into a sky so blue they
are drowning in distance.
Legs, hips, hearts are touching –
but their eyes are turned towards
the high blue, they are rapt in the infinite.
This is how souls touch,
how they go to each other
under the skin and deeper yet . . .

Do I cover you, all of you?
Do you find shelter, here in me?

Here in the quiet, souls in their silence
Pour one into another, bound
in filaments of light.
There are rainbow patterns
on the milky ceiling,
soft explosions of colour.

Is anything softer than your finger tips?
What do your lips taste of ?
Let me taste your heart’s pulse, let me
feel the blood sway in your veins.
I would lie here for hours
unmoving in the silence,
just listening.

The world breaks in the white blank of noon.
Everything falls away, only your closeness
is ever closer, ever more present and yes,
this is powerful, yes, I too am afraid;
I am being so careful
not to hurt you, not to hurt myself.

Slowly now, no need to hurry,
time falls away, space falls away,
now there is only you.
Like this, the sea opening before Moses.
Like this, the world opening before me.
All that there is beats in your body,
beats in your heart.
Let me be closer still, let me
be deeply, completely inside you. Let me be you . . .

And then, the miracle. With a word, a touch,
you admit me to the moonlit glade of your self.
I can wade through the undergrowth of your groin,
rest in the soft nest of your navel,
I can lick at your armpits as a deer licks her fawn,
I can flick at your little ears,
I can drill my tongue into the whorls of your heart.
Sweet shivering shakes my body, too,
I can taste your every perception, your every thought.
The membrane of solitude stretches and bursts,
I am flooded in waves of you.

What a wonderful playground, your body,
A surprise at every step. We are like children
at play in each other, at play in the infinite sea.
No fear yet. No shame yet.
Everything here is one: yourself, myself, the sea, the sea.


trans theo dorgan