Turnings - Nina Cassian

The great turnings I negociate
in the ambient setting, taking heed
not to hit with my forehead the birds, the chairs,
the plants, curved yet ruthless
on their steel axles, the way they whizz past,
over the compact waters
whose inward mouth is ready to suck me in,
past dangerous statues of which I know:
there move in their hollow orbits, at certain hours,
giddily rapid eyes, of all colours; the great
turnings that my body negociates
through distorted objects, which I almost cannot keep clear of
so unpredictable is their contour
-any moment my arm may be laid bare
from my shoulder down to the tip of my forefinger,
the one that has the vision of distances,
the one that precedes me; any moment
my hip may be slit -
this continuous motion of mine,
its purport, I had long known,
then forgotten it, now I sometimes remember it,
usually when I pass very close to a primordial event,
when I start like the carnivorous flower called "Heaven's dew"
which suddenly loses her indifferences when an insect
alights on her petals, then notions become
dazzlingly clear to me, such as "beginning" and "end",
"right", "left", "forward", "backward",
but just for one moment me, I only take heed
not to knock against the vertebrae of giant saurians
that are ceaselessly dug out, in larger and larger quantities,
not to be pierced by the blue needle of a tall building,
not to be sucked in by the waves that travel about the Universe,
in all directions;
maybe the turnings are around me,
with me standing still, and the gust of wind that ruffles
my hair only comes from a flying chair,
a flying statue whizzing past me,
maybe we are spinning round
together, keeping clear of one another,
with catastrophes occurring only when
the sense of orientation of one of us was duller,
when an object had lost its its instinct of an object,
when a plant had lost its instinct of a plant,
and the wave that of a wave, and a bird that of a bird,
and myself that of self.