Woods and Chalices Read online

  big billboards yet, they observed

  the clear seabed at Silba.

  There, where Azra coated you

  with tar. Opened your throat,

  spread it toward the sun,

  as Isis to me, Anubis.

  The Linden Tree

  You didn’t satisfy to us, man from Australia,

  in the magnetic field you acted like a she-kale.

  Cuba squeezes out the blue snake. We hugged you.

  A flash of lightning reports on heaven and spills Fatima.

  Remember the asphalt for the million believers.

  Remember that on those small gardens, among

  ocean ’shrooms and the nation similar

  to Slovenians—similarly suppressed, only that

  they had three more rags in history (half the world)—

  murmuring between Tomar and Fatima,

  between the ordained fourth miracle and the piece

  of cheese, happens. Did you see how the crowd’s voice

  strengthened? Did you feel what the feminine principle is

  (Mary) and how in Tomar (painted incessantly by Marko

  Jakše, although he was never there) the hall

  stirs, stirs centuries, and lifts freemasons

  like some sort of dwarf. Dwarves

  today just wrap ribs to pigeons.

  And the pigeon (with the brush), another pigeon

  (like wurst, in salted and cloudy paper,

  feasting), Bob Perelman is the pigeon.

  He comes (twenty-five years after

  he drew his blood-tax in Arena), a quarter

  of a century I guarded him like my own blind

  beaver who will blast into the dark

  corridors of America with the one

  small, tram-like shift. To us instead of us.

  Holy Science

  doctorate man! fucking

  otter: recommended, reading

  fucking on beaches, on damp grass

  fucking with universal doctrines: labor

  fucking with steamships, in the clouds

  fucking in the arena with moby dick, fucking with partisans

  smog: hoarfrost

  fucking on the cliffs of dubrovnik, the patriot

  fucking with contessa adriana gardi bondi

  she disappeared and returned with a towel

  heard the awful splash and frodo yelling: auuuu!

  fucking with the tatra mountains, with white wine

  with radio antennae, I live off lights

  I live off ljubljana’s liberation M.S., the signet!

  imprimatur: fucking with chains stacked on cushions

  the sun: corinthus

  fucking under right angles, with fields

  with the fast-turning cloud, with cinema

  fucking with the colossal apparatus: bled

  hey, hey, how are you? I hope you’re fine

  I hope you’re well, welcome!

  bohinj: fucking with aspirin

  baltimore: delegates

  barcaiolo sul mare, fucking with buveurs d’ames

  that cathy barbarian would sing black is the color, fucking

  the cat, the wolf, pasha who rides an elephant

  that we’d drink wine, bread, indulge in grass around the house

  se i languidi miei sguardi, enjoy boris’s first-class certificate

  with fucking how, with tea at five

  with regular life, with the pleasure of company and travels

  with this that I wouldn’t let wicked people across the threshold of my home

  because I stood up in solitude, because the sun bathed me

  I’d gladly die mute, friend

  pure as the oak

  We Lived in a Hut, Shivering with Cold

  Is the little bird torn apart

  by a paw? Lights switch on, at least

  one juxtaposition between

  tree

  trunks. On handcarts

  (wheelbarrows) there are

  blue baby

  bags. An unguaranteed

  growth ring is left

  on the asphalt.

  The gadget with which

  you fatten

  your ears,

  rubbed out from sky-

  lights. The other

  will understand all of this

  when he takes the time.

  The Danube will open its graves.

  At Low Tide . . .

  At low tide the footprints are blue

  and I long for the sinkhole.

  Show me what you wrote.

  My poems are genitalia.

  Blue Wave

  Where you offer your fuck-crazed mood,

  I’m already relieved. Mantras

  are morbidized. They recoiled

  in loops on the racks, reflected

  the mouth and voice of Prince Bolkonski.

  I eat from the flock. You contributed

  nothing to this. You gave

  and then burnished. Algae turned up

  beneath the backstay. You broke the incision.

  You devour the fairy tale with an angle.

  Like those weary menefreghisti that eat their fill

  of the sun and fall asleep

  on a wave. It’s hard to move

  the solar system off the retina this way.

  Colombia

  Cats have set themselves on wings.

  Buttons have buttercups. Hares are soft meat,

  hares are soft meat, they quiver and throng.

  They rise the sun, actually hold it

  on little poles planted in the sand.

  Water fortifies the poles in river sand. A pool

  vibrates differently from clay. It spills itself

  and does not come back rhythmically. The sea

  is a guarantee and the nosy are full of adrenaline.

  And now? How are you? Is there also a membrane

  in the volcano along which the tongue glides?

  That which stirs the cells of memory

  and undulates the body and screams

  when the sun soaks, soaks, roasting in Iška?

  And On The Slopes of La Paz

  Bushels full of little lymphs.

  Paper caps of endless yarn.

  There are no more yards, Thursdays,

  orphans released in rows of four,

  blind men playing the accordion

  beneath the chestnuts or at the corner

  of Langus and Jama.

  Only flagellates yearn

  and die with comforted,

  lamenting lungs. Where are

  the trash bags I smashed

  on the heads of maids and their

  officers, so that white Jules Verne

  balloons kept escaping from them

  on footpaths in the park, like those

  found these days only in Persia.

  In Shiraz young men grow out of Cretan

  vases. In Knossos they are showy,

  because there’s no more dust and macadam

  and stockings anymore. Are you falling? In Lisbon,

  at Alfama, you ignite the birds, and in Trieste,

  in the park of Villa Rossetti,

  there are black turtle bellies and fathers

  who portray themselves as goldfish.

  Coat of Arms

  The wet sun stands on dark bricks.

  Through the king’s mouth we see teeth.

  He sews lips. The owl moves its head.

  She’s tired, drowsy, and black.

  She doesn’t glow in gold like she’d have to.

  Fiery Chariot

  The bull’s berry walks on wires.

  The windowpanes are wounds.

  They hiss when the jet streams from the silver

  kettle and a giant flings a discus.

  It turns its head. The helmet touches the tip.

  Shifting The Dedications

  The juice is sore. The stupor endures the bag. When you hurry,

  you
stand up, smith yourself. The vault is still coming.

  You believe, you believe, you believe in your fruit.

  Exhausted, cruel, and lazy, do your eyebrows blaze

  with your loot? What else do you still know, incised one?

  You mellow from sores and pains, no longer mine.

  You bound yourself to nothing. Are you betraying me

  to awaken me? So I would squeal and hurt?

  You drown in your huge shoes, soldier,

  naked to the waist, drawn by the manuscript.

  One could hardly see water under the thick green

  August leaves and the flickering of the centurion.

  You rolled, as a priest would sneakily count

  handfuls of earth. The sun was worn out.

  Washing in Gold

  Dakinis dig and plow and babble

  and push shingles off the roof.

  The clod is microtone.

  The pane shakes against the steamship.

  Isaac Luria wasn’t for food.

  He was for strong ingredients

  in an obscure diet

  like hair, bonbons.

  He smelled sweet and emptied himself, hugged.

  He stooped under the water because he sang.

  Brahmins came for the signet.

  Roe deer drank off layers of water.

  Crickets still had extra buckets

  on their backs, they poured themselves.

  Sometimes, an entire bucket would roll off

  a clumsy cricket, with the sponge.

  Before, the sponge swam in the water in the bucket

  on the cricket’s back under the water.

  Light and light do not touch.

  The belly of God is between, totally stuffed.

  He barely breathes and unfolds.

  Sometimes a butterfly’s wing tickles him

  when he starts to eat his own pupa.

  The Wood’s White Arm

  You don’t have the right to eat even the filly

  of the little paw. Nathan’s headboard is in Prague.

  God knows if he sleeps peacefully. The little paw

  wears out and drinks by the stone. The will flies around

  the birch. The firewood is weak from waiting.

  Are the green birds already throwing up at Komna?

  To want and wish to follow into a duvet.

  Push-ups are done there. Towns are built

  there and shells are sought, the handcarts

  in the mines prepare. Did I comfort

  you then? Do you still wonder,

  when did I comfort you? There were needles

  all around and a spruce and soft moss

  and as now: spring was announcing itself.

  The Kid From Harkov

  Strips of thin plate tissue are love

  without a cell. Snails gush saliva

  and toads. They glaze a cotton wad

  for the orthodox church growing on

  white sand and from bones. Madam

  Yaremenko says there was no right

  tone. She missed the czarist gestures

  from Bijela Crkva. Katarina liked

  Onjegin and Ivan the Terrible lions.

  Karadjordjeviĉes killed the Cincars.

  The Hellenes lasted on vases.

  I reached with a hand under the napkins.

  There was straw, and here and there some

  gefilte fish. Send me the recipe for borscht.

  Porta Di Leone

  Sand and rollerblades and a tailor,

  he keeps bedsprings in the pigment and the mouth.

  It seems he thwarted the upholsterer.

  Do you keep flour, too? Do any flowers fall

  on its head? In the narrow streets they’re tall.

  What if a gas pump hit someone

  walking the street? He didn’t walk. He didn’t

  walk, it just happened this way, what if

  it didn’t happen? Little donkeys

  keep coming back. They bray before evening.

  The door opens, the dung doesn’t disturb.

  Frogs approach Porta di Leone

  and we quelled the mosquito with poplars.

  They grew up under Mussolini.

  Paleochora

  Ron’s land is veiled by a padlock.

  Men are on guns.

  Time doesn’t have a dark suit anymore,

  cows have stovepipes in their stomachs.

  Multiplied, they give a cleaver.

  A white meadow, white millet,

  white millet for brother horses.

  I snacked on a strap.

  The cave got larger.

  The blueness didn’t start to tremble only around

  birds, the bird itself turned

  blue, constituent.

  He invented a typewriter

  on a vacuum, a tunnel in a cave

  that failed. Bill Gates

  sealed off his ear. The hut

  changes into fear. Fear

  opens itself into the dark slippage of cards.

  I wanted to oblige my friend

  so he could play bridge.

  The pea, too, is a miracle of the Trinity.

  Persia

  Hey, monarch, ferry me across

  the river. A nettle nips, a nettle

  does not nip, a nettle

  does not die from frost. We gurgle

  tar, still unborn

  piglet with pretty and white and long

  hair, else

  sorrow, sores, pain,

  and vertigo.

  Do you also fight for her like a lion?

  For screams I’m patriotic.

  Sidewalks are kind.

  The corners of sidewalks are kind

  to invalids. To return love to the blind.

  To make it dewy, to make it

  seen, to make it watered

  by their gazes. To return sight to the blind.

  I will thrust the smell of river sand.

  In The Walk of Tiny Dews

  Parafiled little wretch on a morbid plank.

  Bronze radiates. It pours from leaves and creaks,

  rends grease. Phantasia kataleptikè?

  Rabbits, snow, bushes, boots leak,

  I lie unconscious by the river. Outer space

  gulped dumplings. The smell was constant.

  Inside we stored pieces of gold and wiped,

  wiped river stones. Is it worth

  tipping? Certainly. Then where is

  the sail that cleans the gazelle’s leap? We leap

  through soot. Through flaming hoops,

  twice. The animals’ skin crumbles in the cinema.

  The slippery surface turns and changes.

  The podium creaks. The road is fresh and aches.

  Olive Trees

  The act is luminous. Out of wire, out of

  sage, out of gray green puffs of air.

  I dreamed Poof had brambles instead of

  fur. The foam had patience.

  Did you find a chanterelle? With every layer

  of night a little coat is pulled on.

  The word made the river and the waterfall

  and the power plant and the mill. The Mitchourins

  already to the Mesopotamians. They rolled

  rocks in front of a town gate. They stood

  on a hoop. The space between the word

  and heralds (the shoes pinched) was changed

  by the view. By the pressure on the skin

  of olive trees’ drums starting to ski on the wilderness.

  Mornings

  The poem shines the saw. I don’t know it

  by heart. The spit is merry and embraced,

  soaked with bast. The white one wants, the dowry

  wants, you climb and hurtle on spikes.

  In front of Agnes Martin’s canvas (Pace

  Wildenstein) I came across two

  dervishes. They were Turks. They had

  hair combed like a black app
le.

  Are white caps humble?

  Isn’t the strike the sun brings on beams

  (laid down with force) too dangerous?

  I kiss the earth. Deepen the air

  and dust. I shift gears

  and stand up. Lapis lazuli blots me.

  It Blunts

  Only protosynaptic measures have blackened

  God’s blueness. Nightmare is balsam sleep.

  Rivers smell fragrant, the gallows. I’m worth the brow.

  Weary and wooden. How are the legs?

  Some say they’re real.

  Will he snatch a bigger slice of bread of God’s love?

  Marasca

  The sour cherry is a steamship’s body.

  Panta rei sleeps.

  Scarlet Toga

  Overnight snowfall filled everything.

  The pools are emeralds.

  I talked to people

  with noble mouths.

  They brought cymbals and bronze,

  a chafer wrapped in stiff paper,

  they swung it in a handcart and sang,

  we heard how the fortresses were knocked down.