After the Deluge - Ingmāra Balode

the first such spring after the deluge —
i do not see you squint once.
i promise myself to go to the sea, yet, perfectly smooth, the shore signals rejection.
in faraway fields grass sprouts like hair on boys cut before summer vacation, vertical. secretly lively is the embrace of small insects under its shadow.
do not show the kids flowers as you water the garden, says žižek, they are so saucy, so easy.
the flood has carried all ladies off the tiles. horses like monuments, propped up on their tails
one hoof on a led cannonball or other detail — impossible to hold the movement, ever since renaissance, impossible to hold a king astride on bronze only on two legs.
trees digging their claws into the city's backbone.
i don't see through the trunks your body move turned by light.
streaks are being sold on street corners wrapped in rustling paper.
you are, you are not,
someone whizzes by on a skateboard, happy about the dry ground.

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Ingmāra Balode (born 1981) Latvia
Translated by Ieva Lesinska