1 2 HEP TA ME RON KLAUS HØECK Translation John Irons © 2006 3 For Anne-Marie The mandrakes give a smell, and at our gates are all manner of pleasant fruits, new and old, which I have laid up for thee, O my beloved. Song of Solomon VII, v. 13 4 The Book of the Word 5 6 O in the beginning was the word and the word was with god and the word was god all things were made by it and without it was not anything made that was made and the word became flesh and took its dwelling among us and we saw its glory 7 OA OF the first the first night i see you through i throw day of marienglas the gold-dust by among in and she (summer’s secret with and grey leather decoction) in your eyes’ trousers round the rear seething crucibles glorious a beginning and you become beautiful takes word as if you should die in flesh’s dwelling your skin gleams the first with sea-fire i saw you in and your body the snowstorm’s nitrogen is transformed without without without without into one flesh OP in the beginning was the word and the word was with god and the word was god all things were made by it and without it was not anything made that was made and the word became flesh and took its dwelling among us and we saw its glory OS OG the second night the third night you pull up a fish everything and nothing are from my blood welded together and this morning into the gleaming it stands acetylene of one moment red with magenta you can still on my skin see the scar like a tattoo from that will fade god’s flamethrower into brown smoking on my neck and amethysts as on one of before the week is over yves klein’s last like a seal from neptune scorched canvases 8 The First Book of the Flesh 9 10 OF F OFpA p your profile then i find becomes a cameo in an attack of fever in the dark number seven a take a grip of your a chinese point neck: long-skull behind your left ear grip the ivory i do not stick of your neck any gold needle provençal perhaps into its centre at seventh remove but press or more beautiful than so hard raging ivory with my index finger i grip your that you get the cramps death’s head skull of a holy epilepsy OFP the fourth evening i bite a halo of stellar nebula mauve with lymph in the rainbow of your shoulder and you scream nakedly as if you were about to give birth your pain is spread in the electrolysis of your sex and your desire is transformed into one soul OFpS OFpG you smell i must be a voyeur my love i can plainly see you almost stink your body under the armpits: the vagina’s crabmeat crucibles with and at night cat’s piss and methyl i observe your lap in secret is boiling with the semen’s sea-fire the summer’s caviar seething on the it stinks of death skin of your face and cherries my eye is not still you smell wonderful for a moment my love when you are present 11 OApA OApF five candles i saw your legs are long burn right through like those of a cristel girl around through like the finno-russian behind the marienglas border of your pubis like a pair of compasses the cats racing against that circle round your eyes in the night the first leather of pain and a gawping angel desire’s at our intercourse second snowstorm the right through behind iiiiii me ii i put out the sixth iiii between and you are a lit the seventh candle crane-fly my love OAP the seventh i reach you right through the silver paper of sleep by among in and she and blue angels of dreams around the forehead glorious a day takes its dwelling in the flesh of the word the seventh i reach you right through the wedding dress of the skin without without without without OA G OApS p your skin is white i have to cross and glistening as a seventh thresholds each time shark’s belly when you turn right through the beginning round over and end right through the sea-bed of the sheet assyrian dreams but i have found right through the flame a small grey of logic seven diamonds vein a crackle i have to explode finer than nitrogen i have to pass right through than metal fatigue seven incarnations that leads me to each and every time the bleeding wound of i meet your invulnerability you once again 12 OS F OSpA p i can taste you catch me a cut on your literally lips a small seal between the legs: and still my sperm your thighs in your mouth are tighter than the verdigrised copper a fox trap of rape up between round the loins the teeth still you have caught me why did you not inside the great amethyst take a bite at of fertilisation phallus impudicus in there where the fishes between the tattoo also stiffen of the erect morning in the blood’s magenta OSP the second of february you puff breath into my clay and now here today i wake up fresh with semen in your vagina’s access i am reborn in flesh and red perhaps before the year is over like a picture of leonora OS G OSpS p you ride me pull me hard tonight out of my soul like a godiva otherwise i will wither this time on inside there in myself a brown war horse inside the small desert that has smelt of emptiness salt and blood between the bonfires i spit you pull back my in the face from love foreskin so i you ride me with bared head gently tonight (like paul) without a saddle can ask life in the armour of nakedness for forgiveness 13 OGpA OGpF once more you hover your arms are above me like of kindling wood an eagle a relief my love like welded in corten steel brushwood gathered in unforgivably high one of pieter circling brueghel’s before the third thrust smoke-filled forests down into my throat but let no one and i can see misunderstand this acetylene flame they are stronger than in your eyes the birds’ hollow bones the snow of bliss on when they bear the turrets of al-majaj mir you past the orgasm OGP the fifth day you and i melt together in one raging kiss of the gift of tongues i can still see the spit from the breath’s exegesis drip foaming from your mouth as in one of teresa avila’s most ardent prayers OG S p OGpG your name sounds your knees like an apple branch are sharp like dipped in salt the spikes on and mine like jeanne d’arc’s a saracen’s sword armour (gleaming that slices pink on the inside through the canvas like a mussel) there is no hidden they are god’s spurs symbolism in this in my flesh image i have the last omen merely sketched that i have a possible draft longed for of our heraldry in my heptameron 14 The Second Book of the Flesh 15 16 OF A A p p OFpApF my sex is when i turn a bird in your you round your spinal chord hand a quail your shoulder blade perhaps that suddenly crackles or flies in a flutter rather squeaks out of my darkness alarmingly like a when your pale cameo defect hinge and you gleams when your come towards me ivory crackles from within the secret or rather a provence more beautiful than migrating fieldfare death bearing an urn in search of the last full of may dew through winter apple in your garden your invisible hidden door OFpAP you make me a knight of st john in the dark you paint or scorch your triumphal cross of smoking scarlet (as on the tarot card number twenty) and menstruation on my forehead you resurrect a dead man OFpApS OFpApG tibia i say today i couple and with with you a finger like a mongrel trace down or like a wild cat the mountain ridge without mercy of your shinbone like a harun it tingles ar raschid right up in my neck on a foray you reply as you you snarl but thus put both accept your anatomy’s violet fate the little atlas and my theory of the body grey cat also immediately precisely into place comes into heat 17 OF F F OFpFpA p p a thousand and one nights there is a i will fly turquoise in your left to the ear lobe because baghdad of my dreams you are sagittarius or on this blue mattress because it is a thousand and one times my favourite stone you pour out desire or maybe because you fill its bowl i am to prick from a my finger abbasidian silver pitcher until it bleeds for a thousand and one days the sake of love i hover above as in some arabic the holy city of intercourse legend or other OFpFP behind veil number seven i find you in an attack of fever and i see that passion is precisely the suffering no longer to suffer that nothing hinders any more the epileptic cramp of its fulfilment in the mosque of your body OFpFpS OFpFpG i hang a i press you revolver down hard in (with islamic chasing) my bed up in a green my nails point fishing line to the nadir in this bedroom (i.e.