Robert Sheppard: de-selected poem from History or Sleep: Putting Claws on the Glove (for Joan Brossa)

Tony Fraser has asked me to shave off some pages of my forthcoming 'Selected Poems' and I'm afraid this one has to go, the only section selected (then de-selected) from a poem 'writing through'/'translating' Joan Brossa's visual poems ('from the Catalan', I say, although there are no words in his poems). I thought some of the thoughts embodied in the poem are handled elsewhere, but I regret losing this gesture to a great literary figure. The full poem may still be read in Hymns for the God in which my Typewriter Believes.

from Putting Claws on the Glove: Poemes Objecte by Joan Brossa

from the Catalan

This mask is only off

by being on

You are behind it

and only through it

can you be before us, saying:

See my eyes,

slitted

I have made them for you

through what I say

See my mouth,

its tongue

flipping the letters to and fro,

back and forth, up and down

Let me say: there is a mask

placed upon an open blank page

We shall wear it together