Winter night. Firewood,

caught by internal flame,
stands for a woman’s head
during a windy day.

How a strand shines gold,
threatens to make you blind!
It can’t be moved and gone,
all for a better night.

It can’t be drawn apart,
it can’t be combed away:
you might reveal a sight,
which will incinerate.

Staring inside the flame,
I heed its language glee:
“Do not touch,” and again
there’s a flare “me!”

It makes the heat indoors.
I hear through crunching bones
its choking, begging me “more!”
and furious “let me go!”

Blaze, oh, blaze before me,
torn apart, as a thief,
as a mad tailor’s grief,
fire of winter’s flee.

I recognize your locks,
your weaving and later on,
curling-irons that mock
scorching and red-hot form.

You’re the same as before.
you haven’t made a stock
out of stripped, as a whore,
naked and throbbed log.

It is your way to waste
a thing, and to equal its
destiny to a fate
of yours, to the smallest bits.

Stinging into the core,
rising up, writhing down,
dressed up in pied, adorned,
we are again alone!

This is your ardor, heat!
Don’t deny it! I
did not forget your sheets -
margins entirely charred.

The features can’t be concealed:
your essence betrays your glow,
for no one could ever yield
such an alluring flow,

no one could lose a breath,
to resurrect, to hurl.
That man of Nazareth
could have been saved by your

passion! Now, sin and sate,
choke up within yourself,
jig as a mad menade,
biting your lips in spell.

Howl, quiver, and shake
skinny shoulder, and stroke.
He, who’s up there - God’s sake-
let him inhale your smoke!


Thus wrenches, rustling, the silk,
baring up your hints.
Here flashes a cheek,
there blaze off the lips.

Thus blocks collapse at once,
thus throngs of shining sparks,
joining the heavens’ stars,
out of the ruins blast.

You are the same as you were.
Out of fate, of home
after you stays no more:
cinder and dull charcoal,

coldness, snow and dawn,
freezing and whipping pain,
and, as a scalded burn,
an unrestrained brain.

J.B., 1981
Translation, December 8-11, 2001