The Photographer; An executioner's assistant

photograph of a camera
picture of an execution
photo of a photographer
shooting a picture

shutter speed and dropping blade

late 18th or 19th century

the same pose when one gets fucked in the ass

motherfuckers
kill motherfuckers

bed bench and bend

Panzer Delete

The wind,
imitating a night in Jena,
has blown
and flipped
back to three pages ago.
The page just read
- read but remember nothing.
You don’t remember anything as well
when you blew your mind and memory
but feel the wind blowing the hair has aged
hazy weather or head
when you are next to the old window.

English, language of imperialism - Lecercle

Since this formulation has a slightly provocative, if not insulting, aspect to it
(but my starting-point prompts strong reactions), I shall begin by explaining
the position I am speaking from. I am an Anglicist and have devoted my life
to the English language, which I love with a passion (I take the title of Milner’s
L’amour de la langue seriously).2 I am not only an Anglophile but an Anglomaniac.
And loving the English language entails a passionate attraction to the grammar
of this language, its sounds, its history, the literature that it sustains, the
culture that is inscribed and sedimented in it. In short, I think I can claim
that I am not an Anglophobe. However, it is clear that English has become
the global language and the language of globalisation because it is the language
of empire, whose practices are ever more explicitly imperialist. [...]The issue is controversial, but it preoccupies all those who are interested in English as the language of globalisation.5 For the language of
empire is not only in a position of strength, but also in a position of weakness

A Marxist Philosophy of Language, p. 7

Cassius Song - Instruction # 9 - of films I did not understand

One year of watching films I have seen, when I was a child, but did not understand, but fail to comprehend, once again.

On Boredom - Georges Bernanos

“Well, as I was saying, the world is eaten up by boredom. To perceive this needs a little preliminary thought: you can’t see it all at once. It is like dust. You go about and never notice, you breathe it in, you eat and drink it. It is sifted so fine, it doesn’t even grit on your teeth. But stand still for an instant and there it is, coating your face and hands. To shake off this drizzle of ashes you must be forever on the go. And so people are always “on the go.” Perhaps the answer would be that the world has long been familiar with boredom, that such is the true condition of man. No doubt the seed was scattered all over life, and here and there found fertile soil to take root; but I wonder if man has ever before experienced this contagion, this leprosy of boredom: an aborted despair, a shameful form of despair in some way like the fermentation of a Christianity in decay.”

- Georges Bernanos, Diary of a Country Priest, p.2

We watch things pass by in order to forget that they are watching us die. - Joë Bousquet

Adapted to the life whose phemomena it reflects, thought forbids itself to form a part of its totality. We see only the fact in a fact, we forbid ourselves to discover in it an episode of a life doomed to death.
Our thought does not choose to be the thought of our life. We watch things pass by in order to forget that they are watching us die.

*****
If only my existence, like that of a tree, were the fixity of a site... Or else, like that of my mind, the obliteration of all sites. but I am like that passer-by over there; watch him walk, he seems to be running after a car. He is himself, as the feather that flies is a bird.

*****
.. The whole house is changed, and seems to grow and fall silent, to construct around me a solitude in which the mounting silence of space introduces the majesty and the seething of a sea. A word that comes to my lips completes my fascination with the vision of this structure suddenly open to the invisible and to the void. This word is: absence.

Freedom comes like a thief in the night - Georg Herwegh

Allow me to tell you all
a silly story:
it's just come to mind,
patience is German,
that's what it's about.


There was a good, good woman,
who always did her duty precisely,
and however good she was,
she never thought it was much.


The woman had a lively rooster,
that crowed at her every morning,
and following his rooster-nature
was the best alarm clock she had.


As soon as the day announced itself,
the woman woke her lazy maid,
which made our girl so grumpy
that she once decided grimly


to cut off his noise
and, I'll say it quickly, to kill him.
No sooner thought than done,
the gods received a rooster.


But what did the maid get for it?
While before she was woken with the sun,
she was now woken at midnight,
after she killed the rooster.


Ach! said the maid, who felt very foolish,
if only I could hear the rooster crow!
His crowing sounded as beautiful
as a nightingale singing.


"And now you're joking? Please!"
You know the woman as well as I do;
she is the loveliest far and wide,
to look at her is sheer bliss.


You also know the neighbor's rooster,
that has bothered you so much;
and when you ask me what comes next:
"You, German people, are the maid!"


So when you kill the rooster, you slaves,
don't think you'll get to sleep any longer,
first the woman woke you at the rooster's cry,
now slumber is past forever.


Freedom comes like a thief in the night
and calls to you, "Wake up! Wake up!"
 -
-Georg Herwegh (1817-1875)



Parabel

Erlaubt mir, daß ich 'mal berichte
Euch eine alberne Geschichte:
Sie kommt mir eben in den Sinn,
Geduld ist deutsch, drum nehmt sie hin.

War eine brave, brave Frau,
Die nahm's im Dienste wohl genau,
Und macht', so brav sie auch gewesen,
Doch niemals vieles Federlesen.

Die Frau hatt' einen muntern Hahn,
Der kräht' ihr stets den Morgen an,
Und war nach seiner Hahn-Natur
Für sie die allerbeste Uhr.

Sobald den Tag er angesagt,
Da weckt' die Frau die faule Magd,
Was unsre Magd gar schwer verdroß,
Daß sie im Grimme einst beschloß,

Dem Vogel zu stutzen seine Schwingen
Und, meld' ich's kurz, ihn umzubringen.
Es war gedacht, es war getan,
Die Götter bekamen einen Hahn.

Was aber hat die Magd gewonnen?
Die sonst geweckt ward mit der Sonnen,
Ward nun geweckt um Mitternacht,
Nachdem den Hahn sie umgebracht.

Ach! sprach die Magd, die schwer Betörte,
Wenn ich den Hahn doch krähen hörte!
Sein Krähen hat so schön geklungen,
Als hätt' eine Nachtigall gesungen.

"Und nun der Witz? wir bitten dich!"
Ihr kennt die Frau so gut wie ich;
Sie ist die schönste weit und breit,
Ihr Anblick die volle Seligkeit.

Ihr kennt wohl auch des Nachbars Hahn,
Dem ihr soviel zuleid getan;
Und wenn ihr mich nach dem Dritten fragt:
"Du, deutsches Volk, du bist die Magd!"

Doch wenn ihr den Hahn auch mordet, ihr Sklaven,
So denkt darum nicht länger zu schlafen,
Erst weckt' euch die Frau nach dem Hahnenschrei,
Nun ist's mit dem Schlummer auf ewig vorbei.

Die Freiheit kommt wie ein Dieb in der Nacht
Und ruft euch zu: "Erwacht! erwacht!"

THE STIRRUP-CUP[49] (1840)

GEORG HERWEGH

  THE STIRRUP-CUP[49] (1840)

  The anxious night is gone at last,

  Silent and mute we gallop past

    And ride to our destiny.

  How keen the morning breezes blow!

  Hostess, one glass more ere we go,

    We go to die!

  Thou soft young grass, why now so green?

  Soon like the rose shall be thy sheen,

    My blood thee red shall dye.

  The first quick sip with sword in hand

  I drink, a toast to our native land,

    For our native land to die.

  Now for the next, the time is short,

  The next to Freedom, the queen we court,--

    The fiery cup drain dry!

  These dregs--to whom shall we dedicate?

  To thee, Imperial German State,

    For the German State to die!

  My sweetheart!--But there's no more wine--

  The bullets whistle, the lance heads shine--

    To her the glass where the fragments lie!

  Up! Like a whirlwind into the fray!

  O horseman's joy, at the break of day,

    At the break of day to die!

20 July

- the habit of reading signs, billboards, etc. along the street, in the car, here everything is undecipherable, nice to feel like an illiterate.
- North is now a disillusion. Condemned to remain in the Southeast. Flashed by, the thought of the marriage between science and revolution. Seems to be 'a short love with a long divorce'.

A Song for Anti-Humanism (Non-Structural)

A Song for Anti-Humanism (Non-Structural)
For Chien Swee-Teng and Stolichnaya Andronnikov

A day of six apologies
Arrested by a sentence from a page

 - I was dragged out from that evening bar
no strangers there
(no puerile, self-pitying urban alienation).
Everyone looks familiar here
the same bastards, the same kind of motherfuckers
reproduced en masse
(because their parents wanted, but half-understood, pleasure)
the same pasty faces
who can't wait to get their claws on feminine skin,
get themselves drunk, get the ladies drunk.

'I apologise for six days
Arrested by a sentence
read out
on the radio

the voice told a tale I am more or less familiar with
- the boys hummed a tune and moved their mishapen, spastic hips.
(they needed something to rub on,
and there were many legs of tables and high stools)

Techno beat, we thought of Africa, the beat that could move the most primal soul
the most visceral beat.
I just couldn't use a single word 'dancing' to describe this movement.

We half-understood Hegel
but we remember he said Africa has no history
Their pseudo dialogues have no subject'.

Arrested by six sentences
recorded on the tape.

- I was dragged out of the country I was born.
but I find it hard to call this island factory a country.
But I am not that fucking yellow skin conceptual artist
who claims to have lived in Berlin, New York and been to Venice
who thought he's too good for this place.
Global, international and contemporary citizen of the world, liberal open society.

I hear he's married: amazing, somebody actually opens her legs for him.
I imagined his face when he's having an orgasm.
I have one word for it: non-aesthetic
And I understand beauty is not the chief concern of most conceptualists,
but this guy must have done some dematerialising work on his face too.

He is not a refined, intelligent elitist motherfucker like Borges or Roger Scruton.

My summary for this rant:
fucking artists, writers, philosophers and laid men.

p.54
Mars is expert in the things of war and exercises a certain power by the way of ardor igneous, and for him, Geometry spreads a blood-drenched veil on which one sees Strength draped in red... - Musaeum Hermeticum
p.43
The moon also finally appeared and, in front of her, Dialectic spread a resplendent veil of silver, on which Prudence was depicted clothed in celestial hue... - Musaeum Hermeticum

Details are always vulgar

One should absorb the colour of life, but one should never remember its details. Details are always vulgar - Oscar Wilde

Notes on May - Ernst Auer

1. On Mirror and Glass - why was it not included in Michel Tournier's Le Miroir des idees

what about Television and Morning Windows? the noise and view 'outside' - Evening, they were shut

2. Time,
Longer than the length of her hair
than the length of the lace, the pair of leather boots. (repeated motif in another text)
entangled hair, combing contra criss-cross lacing

3. On Wednesday, a friend tattooed a tiny tit on his hip by rookie tattooist , equals ebriated folly, birthday is not an excuse for stupidity, and also it looks more like being stamped on (by the heated metal cap of a cheap plastic lighter)

Advice: He should have gotten the tattoo in prison, if he wanted it for free. And please, why small instead of big tit, or tit on tit?
On friday, fought two Indians around the housing estate.
Advice: Do it more often, practice makes perfect, should be extended to other areas. The fighting not drinking at neighbourhood though.
Summary: First as Farce then as Tragedy

Pencil of Nature - Ernst Auer

Back in the same room after the fire, though I shouldn't say it is the same, the angle of the sun did not change, to lighten the charred wall with a rhomboid at this time of the day, higher than how one would hang a half length dressing mirror, lower than where the drawing room painting should be, at the neglected corner of the room, the web, a deformed pentagon, traps black flakes than insects, on the floor, I noticed the charcoal photo frame, I recognised the leaf-motif, but I am not here to cry about picture I have lost or to complain about the unpleasant smell.

Canary Wharf

Lack of money pinned me down inside the flat

On my back on the bed in my room

You were outside playing with scissors

Running on the stairs again

Brazil nuts were down & the pigeons were restless

You purchased chocolate to melt it on biscuits

I wrote my name on a banana peel

There should always be a meal with my name on it

& I made myself a drama out of absolutely nothing

Took the time to admire the speed with which we grew boring

I was a rapid mess unfolding dresses

In stark rooms & warehouses

Sanding chairs & cabinets

In canary wharf again

Black Cover

I see the little red book and I want to paint it back

because

reading him is the opposite of

buying gaudy paintings
wearing badges, t-shirts
or carrying a canvas sling bag

with a picture of him.

or to pair him with a fucking mouse from Disney
or a campy anti-war horse by the name of Andy.

to study Marxism is to repeat the mistake of the dialectical materialist creative method, which will harm the creative mood

"To call on us to study Marxism is to repeat the mistake of the dialectical materialist creative method, which will harm the creative mood." To study Marxism means to apply the dialectical materialist and historical materialist viewpoint in our observation of the world, of society and of literature and art; it does not mean writing philosophical lectures into our works of literature and art. Marxism embraces but cannot replace realism in literary and artistic creation, just as it embraces but cannot replace the atomic and electronic theories in physics. Empty, dry dogmatic formulas do indeed destroy the creative mood; not only that, they first destroy Marxism. Dogmatic "Marxism" is not Marxism, it is anti-Marxism. Then does not Marxism destroy the creative mood? Yes, it does. It definitely destroys creative moods that are feudal, bourgeois, petty-bourgeois, liberalistic, individualist, nihilist, art-for-art's sake, aristocratic, decadent or pessimistic, and every other creative mood that is alien to the masses of the people and to the proletariat. So far as proletarian writers and artists are concerned, should not these kinds of creative moods be destroyed? I think they should; they should be utterly destroyed. And while they are being destroyed, something new can be constructed.

my class stand is correct, my intentions are good and I understand all right, but I am not good at expressing myself and so the effect turns out bad.

"It is not a question of stand; my class stand is correct, my intentions are good and I understand all right, but I am not good at expressing myself and so the effect turns out bad." I have already spoken about the dialectical materialist view of motive and effect. Now I want to ask, is not the question of effect one of stand? A person who acts solely by motive and does not inquire what effect his action will have is like a doctor who merely writes prescriptions but does not care how many patients die of them. Or take a political party which merely makes declarations but does not care whether they are carried out. It may well be asked, is this a correct stand? And is the intention here good? Of course, mistakes may occur even though the effect has been taken into account beforehand, but is the intention good when one continues in the same old rut after facts have proved that the effect is bad? In judging a party or a doctor, we must look at practice, at the effect. The same applies in judging a writer. A person with truly good intentions must take the effect into account, sum up experience and study the methods or, in creative work, study the technique of expression. A person with truly good intentions must criticize the shortcomings and mistakes in his own work with the utmost candour and resolve to correct them. This is precisely why Communists employ the method of self-criticism. This alone is the correct stand. Only in this process of serious and responsible practice is it possible gradually to understand what the correct stand is and gradually obtain a good grasp of it. If one does not move in this direction in practice, if there is simply the complacent assertion that one "understands all right", then in fact one has not understood at all.

on termites and singers

"I am not given to praise and eulogy. The works of people who eulogize what is bright are not necessarily great and the works of those who depict the dark are not necessarily paltry." If you are a bourgeois writer or artist, you will eulogize not the proletariat but the bourgeoisie, and if you are a proletarian writer or artist, you will eulogize not the bourgeoisie but the proletariat and working people: it must be one or the other. The works of the eulogists of the bourgeoisie are not necessarily great, nor are the works of those who show that the bourgeoisie is dark necessarily paltry; the works of the eulogists of the proletariat are not necessarily not great, but the works of those who depict the so-called "darkness" of the proletariat are bound to be paltry--are these not facts of history as regards literature and art? Why should we not eulogize the people, the creators of the history of mankind? Why should we not eulogize the proletariat, the Communist Party, New Democracy and socialism? There is a type of person who has no enthusiasm for the people's cause and looks coldly from the side-lines at the struggles and victories of the proletariat and its vanguard; what he is interested in, and will never weary of eulogizing, is himself, plus perhaps a few figures in his small coterie. Of course, such petty-bourgeois individualists are unwilling to eulogize the deeds and virtues of the revolutionary people or heighten their courage in struggle and their confidence in victory. Persons of this type are merely termites in the revolutionary ranks; of course, the revolutionary people have no need for these "singers".

on (over)exposure

"Literary and artistic works have always laid equal stress on the bright and the dark, half and half." This statement contains many muddled ideas. It is not true that literature and art have always done this. Many petty-bourgeois writers have never discovered the bright side. Their works only expose the dark and are known as the "literature of exposure". Some of their works simply specialize in preaching pessimism and world-weariness. On the other hand, Soviet literature in the period of socialist construction portrays mainly the bright. It, too, describes shortcomings in work and portrays negative characters, but this only serves as a contrast to bring out the brightness of the whole picture and is not on a so-called half-and-half basis. The writers and artists of the bourgeoisie in its period of reaction depict the revolutionary masses as mobs and themselves as saints, thus reversing the bright and the dark. Only truly revolutionary writers and artists can correctly solve the problem of whether to extol or to expose. All the dark forces harming the masses of the people must be exposed and all the revolutionary struggles of the masses of the people must be extolled; this is the fundamental task of revolutionary writers and artists.

"The task of literature and art has always been to expose." This assertion, like the previous one, arises from ignorance of the science of history. Literature and art, as we have shown, have never been devoted solely to exposure. For revolutionary writers and artists the targets for exposure can never be the masses, but only the aggressors, exploiters and oppressors and the evil influence they have on the people. The masses too have shortcomings, which should be overcome by criticism and self-criticism within the people's own ranks, and such criticism and self-criticism is also one of the most important tasks of literature and art. But this should not be regarded as any sort of "exposure of the people". As for the people, the question is basically one of education and of raising their level. Only counter-revolutionary writers and artists describe the people as "born fools" and the revolutionary masses as "tyrannical mobs".

on love

"The fundamental point of departure for literature and art is love, love of humanity." Now love may serve as a point of departure, but there is a more basic one. Love as an idea is a product of objective practice. Fundamentally, we do not start from ideas but from objective practice. Our writers and artists who come from the ranks of the intellectuals love the proletariat because society has made them feel that they and the proletariat share a common fate. We hate Japanese imperialism because Japanese imperialism oppresses us. There is absolutely no such thing in the world as love or hatred with out reason or cause. As for the so-called love of humanity, there has been no such all-inclusive love since humanity was divided into classes. All the ruling classes of the past were fond of advocating it, and so were many so-called sages and wise men, but nobody has ever really practiced it, because it is impossible in class society. There will be genuine love of humanity--after classes are eliminated all over the world. Classes have split society into many antagonistic groupings; there will be love of all humanity when classes are eliminated, but not now. We cannot love enemies, we cannot love social evils, our aim is to destroy them. This is common sense; can it be that some of our writers and artists still do not understand this?

"The theory of human nature."

"The theory of human nature." Is there such a thing as human nature? Of course there is. But there is only human nature in the concrete, no human nature in the abstract. In class society there is only human nature of a class character; there is no human nature above classes. We uphold the human nature of the proletariat and of the masses of the people, while the landlord and bourgeois classes uphold the human nature of their own classes, only they do not say so but make it out to be the only human nature in existence. The human nature boosted by certain petty-bourgeois intellectuals is also divorced from or opposed to the masses; what they call human nature is in essence nothing but bourgeois individualism, and so, in their eyes, proletarian human nature is contrary to human nature. "The theory of human nature" which some people in Yenan advocate as the basis of their so-called theory of literature and art puts the matter in just this way and is wholly wrong.

Works of art which lack artistic quality have no force, however progressive they are politically.

What we demand is the unity of politics and art, the unity of content and form, the unity of revolutionary political content and the highest possible perfection of artistic form. Works of art which lack artistic quality have no force, however progressive they are politically. Therefore, we oppose both the tendency to produce works of art with a wrong political viewpoint and the tendency towards the "poster and slogan style" which is correct in political viewpoint but lacking in artistic power. On questions of literature and art we must carry on a struggle on two fronts.

I then used to feel it undignified to do even a little manual labour

The more you put on the airs of a veteran before the masses and play the "hero", the more you try to peddle such stuff to the masses, the less likely they are to accept it. If you want the masses to understand you, if you want to be one with the masses, you must make up your mind to undergo a long and even painful process of tempering. Here I might mention the experience of how my own feelings changed. I began life as a student and at school acquired the ways of a student; I then used to feel it undignified to do even a little manual labour, such as carrying my own luggage in the presence of my fellow students, who were incapable of carrying anything, either on their shoulders or in their hands. At that time I felt that intellectuals were the only clean people in the world, while in comparison workers and peasants were dirty. I did not mind wearing the clothes of other intellectuals, believing them clean, but I would not put on clothes belonging to a worker or peasant, believing them dirty. But after I became a revolutionary and lived with workers and peasants and with soldiers of the revolutionary army, I gradually came to know them well, and they gradually came to know me well too. It was then, and only then, that I fundamentally changed the bourgeois and petty-bourgeois feelings implanted in me in the bourgeois schools. I came to feel that compared with the workers and peasants the unremoulded intellectuals were not clean and that, in the last analysis, the workers and peasants were the cleanest people and, even though their hands were soiled and their feet smeared with cow-dung, they were really cleaner than the bourgeois and petty-bourgeois intellectuals. That is what is meant by a change in feelings, a change from one class to another. If our writers and artists who come from the intelligentsia want their works to be well received by the masses, they must change and remould their thinking and their feelings. Without such a change, without such remoulding, they can do nothing well and will be misfits.

It will be a free literature - Lenin

It will be a free literature, because the idea of socialism and sympathy with the working people, and not greed or careerism, will bring ever new forces to its ranks. It will be a free literature, because it will serve, not some satiated heroine, not the bored "upper ten thousand" suffering from fatty degeneration, but the millions and tens of millions of working people--the flower of the country, its strength and its future. It will be a free literature, enriching the last word in the revolutionary thought of mankind with the experience and living work of the socialist proletariat, bringing about permanent interaction between the experience of the past (scientific socialism, the completion of the development of socialism from its primitive, utopian forms) and the experience of the present (the present struggle of the worker comrades). (Collected Works, Eng. ed., FLPH, Moscow, 1962, Vol. X, pp. 48-49.)

The Fronts of the pen and of the gun

In our struggle for the liberation of the Chinese people there are various fronts, among which there are the fronts of the pen and of the gun, the cultural and the military fronts. To defeat the enemy we must rely primarily on the army with guns. But this army alone is not enough; we must also have a cultural army, which is absolutely indispensable for uniting our own ranks and defeating the enemy. - Mao

The Bourgeoisie by Roque Dalton

http://socialiststories.org/content/bourgeoisie-roque-dalton

Present Tense - Ernst Auer

Present does not exist
it was the point where past and future overlapped.

Say now
now became before.

and how to remember the person who wrote it.

Fridays – Ernst Auer

When Fridays are now reserved for her, I could only mention to others in silence, that I might be faithful to her face. Yet, I fucked up the face I am supposed to trace on wood. And fat boy laughed at me for talking to my reflection. The rest left the table, and it took me four days to write about the half an hour between two strangers: questions, answers, pauses, and long silence. I just can’t record it as a conversation. The silence broken by what you saw in the sky, but I couldn’t see the patch of seven colours - a patch, not an arc or bow like the origin of your surname. I didn’t tell you I am colour blind, why the flowers are painted grey, how your air steward boyfriend could hurt you, and how I contrasted the colours to the patch of rainbow he would leave on your face.

Because of this Modest Style By Ramón López Velarde

Because of this Modest Style

Translated By Michael Schmidt

September 14, 1915

It's how she spreads, without a sound, her scent
of orange blossom on the dark of me,
it is the way she shrouds in mourning black
her mother-of-pearl and ivory, the way
she wears the lace ruff at her throat, and how
she turns her face, quite voiceless, self-possessed,
because she takes the language straight to heart,
is thrifty with the words she speaks.

It's how
she is so reticent yet welcoming
when she comes out to face my panegyrics,
the way she says my name
mocking and mimicking, makes gentle fun,
yet she's aware that my unspoken drama
is really of the heart, though a little silly;
it's how, when night is deep and at its darkest,
we linger after dinner, vaguely talking
and her laughing smile grows fainter and then falls
gently on the tablecloth; it's the teasing way
she won't give me her arm and then allows
deep feeling to come with us when we walk out,
promenading on the hot colonial boulevard. . .

Because of this, your sighing, modest style
of love, I worship you, my faithful star
who like to cloud yourself about in mourning,
generous, hidden blossom; kindly
mellowness who have presided over
my thirty years with the self-denying singleness
a vase has, whose half-blown roses wreathe with scent
the headboard of a convalescent man;
cautious nurse, shy
serving maid, dear friend who trembles
with the trembling of a child when you revise
the reading that we share; apprehensive, always timid
guest at the feast I give; my ally,
humble dove that coos when it is morning
in a minor key, a key that's wholly yours.

May you be blessed, modest, magnificent;
you have possessed the highest summit of my heart,
you who are at once the artist
of lowly and most lofty things, who bear in your hands
my life as if it was your work of art!

O star and orange blossom, may you dwindle
gently rocked in an unwedded peace,
and may you fade out like a morning star
which the lightening greenness of a meadow darkens
or like a flower that finds transfiguration
on the blue west, as it might on a simple bed.

[ ] - Theodor Storm

You bit your lips till they were sore and bleeding,
You wanted this, I know it well, because my lips once covered them.
You let your fair hair be bleached by burning sun and rain:
You wanted it because my hand had once caressed it.
You stand all day over the stove in the heat and smoke.
You delicate hands are all raw.
You want it thus, I know it well, because my eyes once lingered on them.