Read Woods and Chalices Online
Authors: Tomaz Salamun
If you look at the bottom, you don't see crystals.
Crystals are bedsprings, they have noddles
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in their robberies. As crooked as sea-
weed. It sways, sways and doesn't go down.
The water levels it. Crystals are mouths
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of sweethearts. An agave is cut down with a hatchet, too.
A stomach, a sweetheart, an artichoke.
The neighbor's hand, clad in plastic,
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cleaning up dog shit. We're in front
of Barnes & Noble. In front of the pyramids.
Across the street you can buy wine,
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and when going to JFK and changing
at Howard Beach you watch
whales or sea elephants again (fish
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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
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I come. In the conical hayracks, in the intelligent
bull. Rustling massages the sky. The cellar
squats beneath itself. Seed undulates from the sphere.
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Lamb's lightning utters the thought.
Sperm is behind the drawers, behind solace, love
is a red witness. We rented rivers
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and channels and tunnels. We travel a little
stall in the wheat. I wet and splashed on you
on the raft as you daydreamed,
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sheltered on the Ganges' smooth surface.
Did I come from lime? Did I make you
juice with murders? Glue myself to the little knitted
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willow-made baskets? When the basket
gently banged, language slipped
and sizzled. It leaped over fields. The water
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was yellow, brown, downtrodden. The language
frayed. Does the bloom evolve? Mountains
drop into butter. A new fist
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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.
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Dinosaurs are made of rubber,
more precisely, of green
water-soluble chewing
gum and that molasses
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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.
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You cleaned your shoes with your shawl,
what is this, Vendramin, the mediation
between Verdurin and the Misses Nardelli?
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Both nailed dogs onto placards.
Take an eraser, a lamp, and a huge
hammer, they barely lifted it.
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The nailing was done by servants.
The lifting was done by servants, too.
And in the time when there were no
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big billboards yet, they observed
the clear seabed at Silba.
There, where Azra coated you
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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.
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A flash of lightning reports on heaven and spills Fatima.
Remember the asphalt for the million believers.
Remember that on those small gardens, among
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ocean 'shrooms and the nation similar
to Sloveniansâsimilarly suppressed, only that
they had three more rags in history (half the world)â
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murmuring between Tomar and Fatima,
between the ordained fourth miracle and the piece
of cheese, happens. Did you see how the crowd's voice
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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
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stirs, stirs centuries, and lifts freemasons
like some sort of dwarf. Dwarves
today just wrap ribs to pigeons.
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And the pigeon (with the brush), another pigeon
(like wurst, in salted and cloudy paper,
feasting), Bob Perelman is the pigeon.
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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
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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
Â
tree
trunks. On handcarts
(wheelbarrows) there are
Â
blue baby
bags. An unguaranteed
growth ring is left
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on the asphalt.
The gadget with which
you fatten
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your ears,
rubbed out from sky-
lights. The other
Â
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.
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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,
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orphans released in rows of four,
blind men playing the accordion
beneath the chestnuts or at the corner
Â
of Langus and Jama.
Only flagellates yearn
and die with comforted,
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lamenting lungs. Where are
the trash bags I smashed
on the heads of maids and their
Â
officers, so that white Jules Verne
balloons kept escaping from them
on footpaths in the park, like those
Â
found these days only in Persia.
In Shiraz young men grow out of Cretan
vases. In Knossos they are showy,
Â
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,
Â
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.