a b a l l a d f o rmetka kra‰ovec

tomaz salamun

a ballad for metka krasovectranslated from the Slovenian by Michael Biggins

twisted spoon press • prague • 2001

Copyright © 1981, 2001 by TomaÏ ·alamunEnglish translation copyright © 2001 by Michael Biggins

“When I Crawl ...” from Feast by TomaÏ ·alamun, copyright © 2000 by Harcourt, Inc.,reprinted by permission of Harcourt, Inc.

All rights reserved. This book, or parts thereof, may not beused or reproduced in any form, except in the context of reviews,

without written permission from the publisher.

isbn 80-86264-12-2

Publication of this book has been made possible in part by a grant from the Trubar Foundation, located at

the Association of Slovenian Writers, Ljubljana, Slovenia.

“Night drenches the land . . .” 13“Off with the crackpot’s head . . .” 14“Father, with your whetted . . .” 15“O tribes! . . .” 16“Shortcuts wash the . . .” 17“Monsters in the gums . . .” 18“I don’t like black cherries . . .” 19“Whips! Yolks! . . .” 20“Sullen is the pose . . .” 21“A tiny bug . . .” 22“It was exactly noon . . .” 23“A line-drawing deer . . .” 24“On Sundays, when they . . .” 25“A sword delineates . . .” 26“A seed flying off . . .” 27“I drink flour out . . .” 28“Of all the drenched guests . . .” 29“I throb in tiny . . .” 30epitaph 31“A stream, . . .” 32“I eat rhubarb and . . .” 33“The stone, not the mind, . . .” 34“I remember a thorn . . .” 35“The chalk in this picture . . .” 36“They’ve blocked our . . .” 37“The children’s mouths . . .” 38“Sorry, pine! . . .” 39“A fly on the hairs . . .” 40“Ladders are made . . .” 41

contents

book 1

“The wings of a bee . . .” 42west broadway 43gabrãe 44109 = 10 = 1 45“Blue circles in the . . .” 46“Blue pencils on a white . . .” 47“Within the mountain . . .” 48“Feathers are the feathers . . .” 49“A city of light . . .” 50“Supreme grace opens onto . . .” 51“Counting is most terrible . . .” 52snow man 53we peasants 54the dance 55san juán de la cruz and john dilg 57insects, birds 58“Endure . . .” 59manhattan 60one, my arm 61a ballad for metka kra‰ovec 62“A book of . . .” 66to david 67mitla 68“To the nun . . .” 69“I set a . . .” 70“If it weren’t for Descartes . . .” 71“When I crawl . . .” 72“With my tongue . . .” 73god’s straw 74andraÏ and tomaÏ ‰alamun 76ragtime 77

big deal 81telegram 82rites over charred remains 83bathtub army 84juice of oranges 85sayings of the world 86memory 87“I’m suffused . . .” 88by jove, here we go again 89problems and mysticism 90the oeuvre and its brackets 92“Not just me . . .” 94letters to my wife 95so what did i do in new york? 98i’ll write you a sonnet 100“In hell they eat . . .” 101“The people who . . .” 102“Don’t fool yourselves . . .” 103doubting grandson 104prologue i 105prologue ii 106a prayer 107god 108sixth of june 109poetry 110metka 111the man from galilee 112de rerum naturae 113“My grandma . . .” 114riko adamiã 115marko 116astonished eyes 117

book 2

light not fed by light 118the boat 119jerusalem 120kami 121the tree 122a stroll in the zoo 123circles 130three poems for miriam 132bob! 136thirty-seven and you twenty-one 137why do you tremble, alejandrogallegos duval! 138

to pavãek 139gaza 140my uncle the jockey andthe butcher in zone a 142

the koper-saratoga springs axis 143my bard and brother 145chez les contents 147small wonder that our old professoris now mayor or rome 148

dear metka! 149liberty, blue folder 151la lettre de mon père, le pédiatre 153grain 154the word and the truth 155

book 1

This memoir is a hatchet to slash through my own heavy fleshand through the flesh of anyone else who happens to get inthe way . . . But, you see, this is not fiction. This is life. Myproblem is that I don’t know what I am doing. I lived all thismess, but I don’t know what it is. I don’t even know what Imean by “it.”

Joyce Carol Oates, Expensive People

“Nothingness is the source of everything,” I say — and precisely that allows me to stand on it as safely as on concrete.

Emil Filipãiã, Grein vaun

Night drenches the land of the smile.Death is in an ant’s fist.

I didn’t bring dice to the table not to see the cake’s bottom.

Escape up the power pillar!The emperor’s servants’ door won’t yield to dust.

Draw a totem in the nests. The dog will drag off what’s there.

Moss is tucked away in dark drawers.

13·

Off with the crackpot’s head. His horse eats.

Billions of stalwarts. Too few for a single bird flight.

Who, if he ponders, knows of a tree shooting out of a pumpkin.

Found a green airplane. Throw steaks on the block.

Neither the screen on the window nor the guard at the door cares to hear about one gray kopeck. Each knows the wisdom of both sides.

14·

Father, with your whetted teeth, why don’t flowers grow from your flesh?

Questions are the chronic deaths of unmilked animals. Sight is the punishment.

I don’t know what the spirit of silver smells like.

15·

O tribes! Graze your fly on your mouths.The fortress bursts.Let the ointment drip on the rounded shapes of the planes.

Yes, said Alice, but that leaves the question of whether time has a pocket.Gold needs soap bubbles more than the sky.

Wire the horses. They know what to do with the oats.

The eye washes a wound in the belly. This is where I’m at home.

16·

Shortcuts wash the street. The breath of springtime lingers and stands still.

There are fingers in cups on the altar.Whoever picks up the pot will boil.

The peaks of the rooftops. See the rope on the branch? Perpendicular fromthe pine.Solitude is a shot in the void.

All people don’t have a sense of moderation.

Draw fairy tales. I’ll be in the picture as punishment.

A photo of the copy will sink any goalie.

17·

Monsters in the gums are crushed into birds’ shoes.Their shin bones stick out.

In the saddle the windows are egg-shaped.

The name is in the whiteness and the jagged w’s.

Others rework the factories into rabbits.

There’s gold in the seed. Only in snow does it melt into a cult.

The king whispers to the shore.

18·

I don’t like black cherries on the tree.Who rubbed soot on the she bear?A fetus, smashed jaw bone, part of the wind pipe missing.I’d like to be rain, scrubbing the roof.I’d like all my hair to burn, to be bare.I died when I took my shoes off.Ivy entwined me, like a castle.Inside me there’s still chalk,outside a small yellow briefcase.It dangles from my hand like a saint hangedfrom a tree — the same cherry tree.

19·

For David Del Tredici

Whips! Yolks!The captain threw a lasso and knocked me to the steamship’s bottom.I’m left alone in these peelings of spring.My tunic too long. You sting me.I can’t endure with my sleeves rolled up.God knows where the pianist is.A door with a brass handle slammed behind him.The book shelves shook as he started his car.

20·

Sullen is the pose of the black child, bending over the well.He’s eating his scabs.A glider shoots out of a hangar.It must be early April.The child shivers on the stone.You can see the pilot’s leather eyes.The leather straps under the pilot’s chin arethinner than the rope that drops into the well.

21·

A tiny bug is on the screen of a sifter,on it a drop of beer.Next floor up lives a girl with yellow eyes.

22·

It was exactly noon when the sun shonestraight down on my head.I counted my rings, looked for the shade.I placed my stamp in the desert.Then I took a monogrammed handkerchief.I put it under a waterfall.It was a minute past noon.The balance remained the same.

23·

A line-drawing deer swims in the water.Easter recurs eternally.A wild boar shakes the trunk of an oak.Tea spills across the grass.Numbers are etched in binocular lenses.

24·

On Sundays, when they wrap the bells up in cellophaneand carpenters hammer nails into the wooden wall,people flow like a stream. Water alwaysruns downhill.On Mondays soldiers get dry rations.They rub cortisone on themselves.Bunches of hellebores adorn the sleds.

25·

A sword delineates seven things.

Deer, children aren’t born from mothers, but fromemptiness. Likewise, lettuce doesn’t grow out of the ground,but from emptiness.

I’m more silent than a snake.

26·

A seed flying off the adhesive tape,where did I draw a train on the map?Boughs branches, boughs branches catch the engine’s steam.Turn on the lights.I see my neighbor’s tiny yellow fist.I imagine the world standing on its tip toes.Here in the tunnel someone forgot an orange.Only oil can slip through the sun.It shines onto a carved bench.

27·

I drink flour out of Meissen saucers.I never considered that knots are wherebranches grow out of the pines.Why does the flame licking my hand emanate from the eyesof a man long since dead?The Danube floods.All memory is extinguished.

28·

Of all the drenched guests only the oldestdoesn’t bother me.The rest should be shoved in an igloo.We’ll give them marmelade, like last year.I’m speaking in the future tense.When we lift all of it up, set it on roundpoles and slowly, with horses, move the nests toward the south.

29·

I throb in tiny copper wall tiles.You’ve struck me to the quick with that light.Count the leaves of your life,you’ll see I’m not mistaken.Only sheep will slip.

30·

epitaph

Only God exists. Spirits are a phantom.Blind shadows of machines concealing the Kiss.My Death is my Death. It won’t be sharedwith the dull peace of others squashed beneath this sod.

Whoever kneels at my grave — take note —the earth will shake. I’ll root up the sweet juices fromyour genitals and neck. Give me your mouth.Take care that no thorns pierce your

eardrums as you writhe, like a worm,the living before the dead. Let this oxygenbomb wash you gently. Explode you only

so far as your heart will support. Stand upand remember. I love everyone who truly knows me.Always. Get up now. You’ve pledged yourself and awakened.

31·

A stream,the scent of freshness.My tooth starts aching.

All my girlfriends have turned gray.

Dandelion fluff floats.A stone sinks.I stare at the circles.

White plates come between the fish and blue tablecloth.

32·

I eat rhubarb and see grandfather’shouse with its oleanders and crackedsteps.

Tsilka is forbidden to clean the guns.

Mrs. Abramiã is winding wool.

Deer come in the early morning.

German prisoners eat out of tin plates.

33·

The stone, not the mind, drawscircles in the pond.I wait for the right gesture to straighten my heart.

Birds across the ocean,the same spoons are here, too.

When I see cakes wrapped up in parttransparent, part frosted paper,my mouth waters.

34·

I remember a thorn in my heel.Sheaves of wheat lay in a field.

When I climbed up on my father’s shoulders,I didn’t know he would die.

Blue towels terrify me.

The pictures of naked women keep movingto higher shelves as I grow up.

When father works, the clocks stand still.

35·

The chalk in this picture will have to be fixed.

Even really strange people travel by train.

The world is so big and widethat we’re like little flies.

That taxi driver must have suffered a lot in life,huh, mommy.

It’s composition when the lines blur nicelyand arrive at the same spot on the apple’s crust.

36·

They’ve blocked our radio.

In freedom everyone’s eyes will shine.

We’ll smooth out foil chocolate wrappersand roll them up again in tight, tiny ballsfor other continents.

Bombs kill grasshoppers, too, if they fall on a meadow.

37·

The children’s mouths are smeared with chocolate.There’s a blotter and a bronze horse on the desk.

I look at my white heels.A mill like the one shepherds make out at pasture.

In the clap of a hand:countless cow births.

38·

Sorry, pine!You fall when I write.

Those lines that the lion scented are in the pupil of my eye.

I’d like to die with a red cap on my head.

39·

A fly on the hairs between splayed legshas no sense of the agony of birth.

In a great walla crevice for a white candle.

The number 20.I’ve hurt my fist.

The arc of a swaying net retains the samepower of primordial memory as the ash of this box.

40·

Ladders are made of the same rusty points as mud.

A dark, precisely fitted bandagecovers my sun in its golden spot.

I touch the skin:it doesn’t flash.

Deceptions are the deceptions of technology:of an unformed face.

41·

The wings of a bee torn off:he pitched wooden hoops onto a bottleneck.

A duck devours mould to keep the species from dying out.

42·

west broadway

I like being in the air. I descend on the city, onpeople. Burrow into the ground. Carts with oxen,a peasant with a whip drives through the village on a peacefulafternoon. In the Bronx, a Jew dressed like he wasback then. The view onto the roofs of streetcars fromthe dentist’s in the Ljubljana skyscraperis gone. They were strange and I was so highup. Then came the hungry years. I was in placeswhere people wore black, clingingtrousers. Walls were spattered with redoxide, the mayor showed us where a giantpower plant would stand. Then we moved to the sea.Among the bamboo I puzzled where all the pineneedles came from. I watched steam shipsfrom the terrace. I knew I would sail. They woke me upin a town where the white sun shone on the Duomo.The pharmacists whispered. They threw books ontotrucks. They were leaving because we had come.I don’t have a country. Whomever I clutch onto, I drink.Everywhere they bid bulldozers to tear down mybuildings. This bar and these people walking past —Castelli, who’s aged since I saw himlast — that’s when the fire was in Venice, there wasa revolution, although he still has the samedog, other beautiful women around him, the same kind ofwild orchid in his lapel.

43·

gabrce

A fine thing. The right thing. These dark pinebranches guard what’s behind them, color. A bird,chiseled like a wooden toy — a papernapkin — if it didn’t hop and sing.A strong desire seizes me to climb up andset a silver candlestick beside its nest.A gesture beside the mould of death. These fellows willgrow up into mountains, they’ll moulder like abandonedmills. Will memory ever scatter them over theearth in the sky? Lojze, Stanko, the innkeeper’scross-eyed boy. Gone where? I’ll be a waiter. I’ll bea woodsman. I’ll stay at home on the farm. I’ll goin search of other sunsets, to sea.Is the line between snow and dry landsharply defined? Is the RiÏana the best place for pitchingbanknotes into lard? Will you come back next year?Are you eating enough meat?

44·