Woods and Chalices (3 page)

If you look at the bottom, you don't see crystals.

Crystals are bedsprings, they have noddles

 

in their robberies. As crooked as sea-

weed. It sways, sways and doesn't go down.

The water levels it. Crystals are mouths

 

of sweethearts. An agave is cut down with a hatchet, too.

A stomach, a sweetheart, an artichoke.

The neighbor's hand, clad in plastic,

 

cleaning up dog shit. We're in front

of Barnes & Noble. In front of the pyramids.

Across the street you can buy wine,

 

and when going to JFK and changing

at Howard Beach you watch

whales or sea elephants again (fish

 

that flash) for which the artist drew

gold pears, beards that reach

to the airborne planes and to the depths of the sea.

Canada begs one's butter. Everyone is in

the clearing. Godfather crouches, he's tender,

he tortures. The roost is mute. Iron shod

 

I come. In the conical hayracks, in the intelligent

bull. Rustling massages the sky. The cellar

squats beneath itself. Seed undulates from the sphere.

 

Lamb's lightning utters the thought.

Sperm is behind the drawers, behind solace, love

is a red witness. We rented rivers

 

and channels and tunnels. We travel a little

stall in the wheat. I wet and splashed on you

on the raft as you daydreamed,

 

sheltered on the Ganges' smooth surface.

Did I come from lime? Did I make you

juice with murders? Glue myself to the little knitted

 

willow-made baskets? When the basket

gently banged, language slipped

and sizzled. It leaped over fields. The water

 

was yellow, brown, downtrodden. The language

frayed. Does the bloom evolve? Mountains

drop into butter. A new fist

 

picks them up. It makes plants from rice. The snow

jumps at and batters the fields. If I didn't

protect your mouth, the cross would rot.

No one rides on

the crest. No one stops Rembrandt.

Trousers worn down on parmesan.

On the crests of the hooved.

 

Dinosaurs are made of rubber,

more precisely, of green

water-soluble chewing

gum and that molasses

 

à la watered-down sherry.

You are drunk.

Of course I reserved two beds.

Of course I will force the door, what do I care.

Few of the ones he granted requested

the invention. He didn't overlook it.

He wasn't able to overlook it.

It opens like a patch. The empire

condenses and softens. First

there are calluses. Then the wrap

goes numb. The smell of pavement starts

to boil. The pole obtains azure,

water's dark surface. Someone from afar

leaps, as an animal would fall

from a roof. He uses his arms to seize.

The pole bends. Icicles

sizzle in the sun, are noted.

The little bird pecked up the nest.

I study lungs. I go nowhere.

I gaze at the edge of white mountains. I want to die.

The path goes into money. Now I can occupy a calendar

of authority and give away the tent. They are twisted

into the song, the food, the sea. They are dressed

in white stories. He wasn't hoarse, who didn't know,

a stamp healed the window and the wound together.

The motive is beautiful. The elephant is bottomless.

It spins vases and the girls in them.

It spills itself on little cups, a coffee, an airplane

kneels in the overgrown grass. This isn't my bread.

The bread is all yours. It adorns itself with claws.

Jump into the factory of rough flags

and stretch the edge. Fall asleep with the stretched edge.

These are the little ribs of my patrons.

They tramp in the black residue. They stir

loam shipward, oust birds from
v
's and
c
's.

There are vast white plains seen

only by gargoyles. The sun

doesn't lessen the animals' luster. Gnats move

with the raft on the river. Thorns cannot help

themselves with water. You retreat with the drums,

Tugo. You space out wedges and cotton wads,

forget about blunt blows and cathedral bones.

The entire temple seethes. Dwarves with lanterns

don't depict even the first ring. Between

the dug-in hoof and the earth (graves of young

potentates) there's not enough sturdy concentration.

Vendramin! Sharpen it! I tell you

to sharpen it but not so ardently

that you break it again.

 

You cleaned your shoes with your shawl,

what is this, Vendramin, the mediation

between Verdurin and the Misses Nardelli?

 

Both nailed dogs onto placards.

Take an eraser, a lamp, and a huge

hammer, they barely lifted it.

 

The nailing was done by servants.

The lifting was done by servants, too.

And in the time when there were no

 

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.

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.

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

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 the footprints are blue

and I long for the sinkhole.

 

Show me what you wrote.

My poems are genitalia.

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.

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 IÅ¡ka?

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.

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.

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.

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.

Dakinis dig and plow and babble

and push shingles off the roof.

The clod is microtone.

The pane shakes against the steamship.