A Ballad for Metka Krašovec Read online

  Andraž and Tomaž Šalamun,

  sitting in green armchairs,

  two awesome salesmen from the least.

  (I meant to write from the east,

  but mistyped.)

  He with his madness,

  I with my Christ.

  Both of us stare at the smoke.

  Yeah, I fuck his brain.

  He loves my cries.

  (I meant to write Christ,

  but mistyped,

  word of honor in both

  cases.)

  The same, mum!

  ragtime

  Gods,

  my thanks to you.

  You’ve given me

  a book.

  My flight to

  Mexico City is AM 405

  I’ll just take a shower,

  to pick up the money,

  to fuck

  Alejandro Gallegos Duval.

  BOOK 2

  big deal

  It rains, it rains,

  my soul is Raskolnikov’s soul.

  I’ve cast my people through the air

  like a huge bird squirting color.

  I’m a criminal, just as outside Hess’s

  door my guards change.

  But Hess has his home in Spandau.

  I’m confined to my castle of choice.

  The Piranesis no longer comfort me, nor

  the Smyrna carpets. Even less, that you also

  farted around here like some Ford Maddox Ford,

  Louis Adamič. Stella was

  mad about your black brother in

  Dolenjsko. At first it was like a

  fairy tale. But going back, in mid-Atlantic you

  wrote: my people are in the scorpion’s maw.

  Your folks, son of Adam, smoked

  you in a shed in mid-America. By

  way of ensuring: 1) that you wouldn’t get homesick,

  2) that you’d remember your Mudville.

  telegram

  Sí, hasta julio,

  Junoš, I hear

  sawing in the

  forest. It rains sound here. Yeast

  rises. What collapses into

  toads and parachutes? In short, damp

  wafers form

  a roof for

  a figure in

  a cloak which is

  a yellow

  dot. Where?

  Not, most likely, on

  the canvas. We only see

  the sky.

  If little men

  make order in

  our stomachs,

  there must be some

  lift that raises them to

  eye level.

  rites over charred remains

  Out of the butter of

  Blato, your Mudville. Nomina sunt consequentia

  rerum.

  I look at a log

  in the fire. I stuff Adamič into a little

  cup. I kick him over the

  fire, into the smoke.

  He’s still burning.

  He shaves and exercises.

  His tissue pulls away in sizzling

  bubbles. Then I take a

  glass of port

  and douse the

  fat man’s panic.

  The wood hisses. There. I’ve put you out now,

  moron.

  bathtub army

  Often when I’ve traveled with my huge

  yellow bicycle around the shell of

  America and slept in motels where next to

  the lamp on a pale violet night

  stand there was usually a Bible on a chain I’ve

  thought that these days besides me

  there probably aren’t many people in the world

  who within their children’s lifetime stand a

  real chance of having their country nail their

  poetry on a chain to bedsides which will certainly

  happen in Slovenia with my poems

  because by then even we will have quite a few

  motels.

  juice of oranges

  I’m exhausted. The grass is gray with

  dew after a long night. The pines are

  ballerinas. I forgot my lunchbox

  in the room. If the wind were to

  stop, the cloud would fall in the pond.

  My boot is dark brown from the

  water in the ground, which comes from the sky.

  I’m distracted and infected by the halo.

  Surely I’d be more faithful than

  a Tang dynasty monk. Loves

  which go streaming past so quickly. Death is

  a strange drink. Like pinned scraps of paper at

  a tailor’s, outlined with chalk.

  Like white clouds ringing the tops of pines.

  sayings of the world

  Once long, long

  ago I stopped by

  Milčinski Street.

  A young fellow was

  drying a stocking

  on the tile stove.

  Then I said to

  Maruška, hey, let’s bet

  I know who your

  next love will be.

  I was so convinced

  that I proposed

  to write down your

  name, seal the envelope, take it to

  the bank, and I also

  wanted David to

  end up with that

  chain. For us

  to see years

  later. Where are you today,

  Bojan

  Baskar, now that I’ve

  remembered you in Yaddo. Nil,

  too, how are you!

  memory

  In the cry

  of heaven I hear

  the deadly

  silence

  of birth

  impressing itself

  on people and

  animals. I

  rave in

  the snow. My

  tracks water

  the mind

  of the masters.

  An insect slices through

  the air and

  leaves.

  I’m suffused with

  pleasure in an instant, when I think

  how I’ve broken

  all my wives’

  hearts.

  by jove, here we go again

  Speak! Who are you?

  Do you kill because you want to be killed and

  loved?

  Sure, that probably plays a part.

  Each human leaks, the flesh is weak.

  I am a canvas. I catch light,

  returning it to where it came from.

  If I hadn’t met you, I would have met somebody

  else. Do you think the

  light that your face is reflecting

  will be memorized?

  Everything withers away if it isn’t fed.

  We’re in Mexico, aren’t we?

  “The sun would collapse.” Even the

  guidebook spells it out clearly.

  Do you suppose, then, that you even have

  a right to your eyes, like some underaged

  beetle? Jove comes from Jupiter,

  Jovis. There’s nothing innocent

  about me. Even if I take

  a newspaper and rewrite it, what comes out

  is what is. Look, where it says:

  Careful! This will make you gasp!

  problems and mysticism

  Taras relates that

  Slodnjak writes that

  Cankar’s women

  told him that he

  kicked them. And that this made him a great

  mystic. I couldn’t say, since I haven’t

  read him. My grandmother, the late

  Jelka ·alamun, née Toplak, simply

  slapped him. He was drunk and

  shameless when he and Kraigher

  came to visit. For me, the only

  mystical thing about Cankar was

  the fact that during the war

  when grandfath
er was

  interned in Serbia, some Nazi

  bigshot who was

  living in his villa in

  Ptuj bought the complete Schwentner

  edition at a price that was high

  even for then. What a

  difference between grandpa, who got turned on by Cankar about

  as much as I do, and Herr

  Brunner, who clearly prized

  the culture of a small

  nation. I sold the set to Trubar’s

  Antiquarian. I can’t recall

  what I used the money for.

  Just as mystical are the passions of

  empires. For instance last

  month, when the Slavists’ conference in

  Minnesota hashed through Chekhov, Solovyov,

  Solzhenitsyn, Mayakovsky, Cankar and

  me. I resent being chased all

  the way here by that bewildered

  Slovenian soul. So I hold firmly to the

  tradition of my clan. On the

  dust jacket I’ve put my grandfather,

  armed. While those two pale and pampered

  hippies in the foreground are my father

  and uncle.

  the oeuvre and its brackets

  Let various Marxists and the herd still

  shuffling outside my door gnash their

  teeth, but I’m living

  now. All I

  do is slightly

  rearrange the struggle for the seed flowing

  in the universe.

  Remember how Maruška

  went around dressed!

  A fatter rope around

  her waist – three years later it appeared in

  Vogue – than

  the kind they use to dock

  a steamship. One day Metka will

  show up at the Academy in

  sackcloth, tongues of flame shooting from

  her eyes. My wives

  vie with the Lord

  for disguises.

  Right at the edge they scream.

  They excise me from the head of the world. That’s why

  this time the muses dictate practical

  instructions to me, because they want me to be

  fine, even when I’m old and

  dottering. With everything cooked

  and laundered just right, young poets and lovers

  met nicely at the door.

  And not a day’s delay with correspondence.

  In short, my wives must leap into

  the Void, but

  not with their eyes

  closed, or holding their noses from violent

  love.

  Clearly, that technique only leads to an awful

  kerplunk!

  Not just me.

  Everyone I touch becomes

  the food of this flame.

  letters to my wife

  I

  I will be shot

  on a day

  that is

  compact and

  fresh.

  II

  Say hello to Darko if he comes around.

  I am your son.

  I am your

  black star.

  III

  I look at a female that

  glares

  insanely,

  smoking furiously.

  IV

  The ladybug earns

  a patchwork for every

  black

  and red dot.

  V

  The tribe of the

  Book gnaws bones into gelatine

  and marmelade.

  Nature goes in the

  other direction.

  VI

  I think

  tortoises

  live so long

  because they don’t see

  color.

  VII

  To die touching skin.

  To see mountains out the window.

  To cut into flesh and blood of what the wind carries off.

  This is my time.

  VIII

  Beautiful forms contain a hidden

  wound.

  Streams and fields are on

  boards.

  Back then there were no

  bridges of reinforced concrete. If

  the heart doesn’t look out

  through the arches, it looks

  nowhere.

  Stigmata are a domestication and

  forgetting.

  so what did i do in new york?

  First: six days with no

  mail!?

  All kinds of things. Bought books. Put

  Alejandro’s ring on

  my right middle finger.

  I want to wear them both. Phoned Curt and

  Hortense. Spoke to a

  woman with a curly-haired

  child and listened to her

  life story late into the night.

  Watched Woody Allen’s Manhattan twice,

  and twice got up and clapped.

  Danced wildly way at the end of

  Christopher Street near the docks and sniffed

  poppers. Called a

  cab and went to Club 24, First

  Avenue. No more discount for me, even if I

  lie,

  anyone can see how much I’ve aged.

  Asked a doctor if maybe I haven’t caught

  syphilis, now that I’ve married

  you. Slept with Larry, an incredibly nice

  23-year-old black man studying

  law.

  He didn’t smell a bit.

  We laughed our heads off. And then slid into

  the pool like a couple of relaxed, naked

  cows and serenely watched the

  other people. Thought: you’d really

  lose it, if you knew.

  Less than a month after the wedding!

  By the way, David Ray, do you think I will be

  shot for this in Yugoslavia? Was a little

  amazed at myself, a little

  appalled, quite happy. The first three weeks I

  didn’t miss you,

  now I miss you, as I

  write this. Yes, Metka, I really

  mean this, I live and work faithfully and

  devoutly. What else? Endlessly debated whether I should

  buy running shoes, and still

  haven’t decided, one of Vivien’s shoes

  pinches. Yesterday Junoš

  wrote me. They’ve moved Ferdo to

  Salina Cruz, into the room where I used

  to be, because Maja’s mother

  has come, so “they can keep better tabs

  on me.” He must have gone

  crazy. Sometimes I feel such

  infinite sadness. You Slovenes are so obsessed

  with property. What will become of your

  paintings if you

  constantly whine at me, spinach yes, carrots

  no. Was it you who wrote him to make

  sure I don’t get together with

  Alejandro? Sometimes I suspect you of all kinds

  of idiocy.

  Write to me, Christ, God!

  i’ll write you a sonnet

  Little bourgeois girl, what were you thinking of,

  marrying a poet? What is this business about betrayal,

  and that your head aches? Fuentes decided that after his

  fiftieth birthday he would no longer: change wives, grant

  interviews, make awards. Just two minutes

  ago I paced through the room furiously wondering

  if I should decide the same. My father decided to

  learn to type before his fortieth birthday.

  Can you imagine! To write all of your correspondence

  at home! Well, my Malinche, in case you’ve decided

  to play that kind of trick on your endangered Aztecs,

  remember why I’ve come among you. To teach

  you to use a chamber pot, watch the movies, and perfect

 
the race. It’s obvious the gold goes back to Spain!

  In hell they eat nuts that they’ve smashed on a rock.

  Even there they keep a diary.

  A cow moos.

  The mountain that hears it, smashes it.

  The mountain crumbles to bits.

  A bird now hovers over it to drink water.

  The process censors the material.

  The people who in one way

  or another have passed through me

  fuel the earth,

  they fuel its beads of sweat.

  Love is pain.

  The complete absence of what hurts.

  Golden rays, I’ve trimmed you.

  The darkness takes care of itself.

  Don’t fool yourselves.

  Even when I sit silent and smoke

  stars are extinguished.

  I’ve given no one anything for free.

  Of all forms of glass

  laughter is the closest to death.

  Whoever has seen a bow for him smile

  will not forget what was there

  before I touched the clay.

  Anyhow, look at the back cover!

  doubting grandson

  “Children, go to sleep on the train from Trieste to Vienna. There’s nothing to see along the way.”

  – my grandmother, Mila Gulič, 1891-1978