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.
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