Woman Reading a Letter
 
She stands in profile at the window
From which we only see the light
Blue jacket white collar long frock
Curls fall over her ear
From her tied up hair
As if she did not want to hear
Anything from this world
As if she did not care whether
She might be taken by surprise

She holds the letter in both hands
Each word fills her sails
Each simple already and
Monday and
A yellow-grey sky and
Nights without sleep

Without a sound she sight-reads
The song of the letter
Sings each sentence on the breath
Of the one who wrote it

She stands quite still in the light
All the time following
The sweet strange order
Surprised and seduced
Lost to the will in this writing

Even if we swear
That we are her accomplice
And only want to inhale her image
We would have to
Apologize without a word and
Retrace step by step
Our intrusion

She sits in front of the screen
With its dim light shining upon her
The night holds on tight to her room

One hand propped up
The forefinger of the other
Conducts the computer
Lost to the world and lightly
Letting the lines rise into her heart

I would wish for a voyeur
As discreet as Vermeer
Who paints his shame into the picture
When he watches me
Reading the letters
Each how was your night and
You sound cheerful very fin de siècle
Last siècle of course
And the letter reading me

How the letter keeps reading me
Again and again
How it cannot let go
Of the widening black
In my pupils
At the passage
I want to be as honest as you are

I would wish for a voyeur
Who closes his eyes
When I hear his steps
And write I hear steps
And with a hasty hasty press
Of my finger make the letter
And myself disappear

Translated by Karen Leeder. Copyright © 2004 Evelyn Schlag, from Selected Poems, Carcanet. All rights reserved.

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