258 chapter seven
«A Wall»
a wall without seasons
a wall that the sun doesn’t reach even at noon
a wall with no trace of human presence
a wall with all sorts of shadows on it
a wall suddenly stripped naked by floodlights
a wall that has “no through road” written on it
a wall with windows tightly closed
a wall without a sound a wall that is earsplitting deafening
a wall where a murder was committed
a wall that’s eaten the windows
a wall written on the wall by a professor
a wall below her eyelashes
a wall sitting across from you sleeping next to you
a wall hidden in shorts
a wall made up of writing
a wall produced by eyeballs a wall behind a tongue
a wall that laughs a wall that is expressionless
a wall in the wilderness a wall at sea
a wall with a calendar on it a wall with the dragon as its zodiac sign
a wall between here and the parents’ bed
a wall that’s died a wall in memory a wall that’s immortal
a wall coming into the world with a cry every second
a wall disguised by a sofa and a tapestry
a wall from which it is impossible to flee
a wall that whichever way you look
remains unspeakable impossible to unmask and criticize
a wall that makes describing the above walls
feel like holding a pen is clutching a pickaxe
a wallIn the original, each line ends in ‘wall,’ with the exception of the last
five, where the modifiers that precede the noun extend to two and three
lines, respectively. In the translation, a wall stands at the beginning of
each line, but the effect of the insistent repetition is comparable. In the
first ten lines (down to eaten the windows), the wall appears to be outside,
as opposed to the walls inside a house that appear in the poem’s final
one third. Observations presented as more or less empirical in lines
1-7 go together with claims of personal perception in lines 5 and 8-10,