1.
From everywhere
I must be going
A space of freedom
the secret of encounter
I was looking around
I feared something else
2.
In order to make something together
they must first get to know each other
To get to know each other
they must first meet each other
(where they can escape
–below the window–
then separate again)
[marriage is pulsing under death]
(On the uncomfortable seats
–they do not face each other–
the things I do not want to happen
The body’s middle
the body’s centre
is sensitive
gets tired
with immobility)
They must write
There must be a reason or a cause (or an enigma)
on each other
the two bodies inside
I have to find what must be solved
a third
the two thoughts inside
the air draught
(door – window)
3.
The light is born
inside the room
as much water as pain
where
gradual abandonment
those who sawed
came to eat
where
they hoped what they buried
would appear
A sonorous and vain, monotonous line
there is no body, he is black
[and goes on
they are lowering her]
Couple, farewell – I go to see
the shade you have become
couple, farewell – I await
the light you bring/flee
I was trapped
there on the glass
[I think I’ll let her]
4.
He died
on her own she managed
silence
she desired
an unbearable movement
an entire man’s weight
The goblin tells her
’tis I who will teach you to draw
child
’tis I who will teach you to dance
You will be that woman once more
she wondered was it woman perhaps
that you don’t remember becoming
she couldn’t remember from what she should be saved
once more that girl
you were ashamed to be
dazzling
I will marry you
confirmation
you will bear me children
you will feed them
Every morning
letters and lines
her own (only)
5.
Even in the obscurity
of Thou
–an addressable Thou–
there still exists
the possibility
of meeting
oneself
(There always belonged
to the poem’s hopes
that it might speak
also about
the entirely Other)
I cannot see what’s first and then what follows
how one prepares oneself
to die
this march has started
I don’t have a voice and what I want
to say does not exist
6.
For hours now I’d been thinking to begin
This is not the place
Nowhere is the place
In this in-between space
(between two
air and water)
place of liberation
of free oscillation
(between
body and thought
you and the Other
between the two)
in statu nascendi
in statu moriendi
(pause of breath)
There’s the foundation:
with no soil
The poem stands on itself
man also
it must
(life, you must pass through)
still be
Language becoming form
present
The poem lonely and en route
is already inside
the secret of the encounter
7.
Stone turns into feather
when air turns into water
I choose not to choose
Written for the installation LLEL / LIR / LYR, a collaboration with Maria Konti during “blind date #12” (Industrial Space, Keiriadon & Sfittion, Athens, December 2006). It was born out of several meetings and conversations with M.K..
Phrases in italics are from her texts. My own text incorporates, paraphrased or intact, phrases by: M. K., Stephane Mallarme, Robert Musil, Paul Celan, Peggy Pheelan.
The text was presented as a manuscript, written on two folding sheets composed of seven pages each. My text was on white paper, and, on top of it, the fragments of phrases from previous texts by M.K. (transcribed in italics above), written on tracing paper.
[The two no. 4 pages: left, the tracing paper. Their synthesis gives rise to section 4 above. They also appear, superimposed, at the centre of the photograph below.]
These fragments, coming from passages by M.K. I had already underlined, were traced exactly in the position where they occurred in the original. Consequently, their position with respect to the text ‘below them’ and on which they were ‘projected’ was a matter of chance.
The two ‘septifold’ sheets were secured with tape on one of their two sides to a long working table found in the industrial space itself, so that the tracing paper covered the writing paper – one could, however, lift it. In front of the table, two stools allowed two visitors to sit in front of the text. In addition, strips of paper bearing the work’s rectangular stamp, ‘LLEL/LIR/LYR’, were at the viewers’ disposal, who could write on them whatever they wished.
As they sat, to their far right hang a drawing by M.K. [selective tracing, with blue carbon sheet on old paper, of a blown up copy of Hans Holbein the Younger’s Portrait of a 39-year old man],
while at the far back, could be seen three brown chalk drawings, also by M.K., that we had executed jointly, under her instructions, directly on the wall.
[The english version and the photographs are my own.]
