Letter to an Archaeologist

Citizen, enemy, mama's boy, sucker, utter

garbage, panhandler, swine, refujew, verrucht;

a scalp so often scalded with boiling water

that the puny brain feels completely cooked.

Yes, we have dwelt here: in this concrete, brick, wooden

rubble which you now arrive to sift.

All our wires were crossed, barbed, tangled, or interwoven.

Also: we didn't love our women, but they conceived.

Sharp is the sound of pickax that hurts dead iron;

still, it's gentler than what we've been told or have said ourselves.

Stranger! move carefully through our carrion:

what seems carrion to you is freedom to our cells.

Leave our names alone. Don't reconstruct those vowels,

consonants, and so forth: they won't resemble larks

but a demented bloodhound whose maw devours

its own traces, feces, and barks, and barks.

1983, translated by the author.