Tonight my hand
. . . . . . .can’t read or write.
It’s neither loving nor unloving. . .
It’s the tongue of a leopard at a spring,
. . . . . . . . . .a grape leaf,
. . . . . . . . . . . .a wolf’s paw.
To move, breathe, eat, drink.
My hand is like a seed
. . . . . . . . .splitting open underground.
Neither a song of the heart nor “common sense,”
neither loving nor unloving,
my hand on my wife’s flesh
. . . . . . . . .is the hand of the first man.
Like a root that finds water underground,
it says to me:
“To eat, drink, cold, hot, struggle, smell, color–
not to live in order to die
but to die to live. . .”

And now
as red female hair blows across my face,
as something stirs on the ground,
as the trees whisper in the dark,
and as the moon rises far off
. . . . . . . . .where we can’t see,
my hand on my wife’s flesh
before the trees, birds, and insects,
I want the right of life,
of the leopard at the spring, of the seed splitting open–
. . . . . . . . . .I want the right of the first man.

translated by Randy Blasing & Mutlu Konuk