About Desire
— Translated by Stephan Delbos
Desire shakes us from wall to wall:
for lives we had once and can never reclaim,
for lives we could have had and did not choose,
for lives we did not have and could not have,
for lives gone away with other beings,
for lives we want right now,
and even for lives to come.
And in the end we are happy only when everything pauses,
and the fullness of the world fits
into the flutter of a curtain in wind,
into the blissful stretch of a cat.
In the end we are happy for the star:
that flashed into the torn net
and mended it.
TEREZA RIEDLBAUCHOVÁ, born in Prague in 1977, is a poet, publisher, translator and literary scholar. She has published six collections of poetry: Modrá jablka (Blue Apples, 2000); Velká biskupovská noc (Great Biskupov Night, 2005); Don Vítor si hraje a jiné básně (Don Vitor Playing and Other Poems, 2009); Pařížský deník (Paris Notebook, 2013); Inkoustová skvrna Karibiku (Ink Stain of the Caribbean, 2020); and the lyric poem Podoba panny pláč (The Image of the Weeping Virgin, 2002). Her poems have been published in magazines and anthologies in the Czech Republic and abroad, and translated into 13 languages. She has published books in the United States, France and Bulgaria. Her children’s book, Pohádky z kolotoče (Fairy Tales from the Carousel), is forthcoming.