Read Woods and Chalices Online
Authors: Tomaz Salamun
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Isaac Luria wasn't for food.
He was for strong ingredients
in an obscure diet
like hair, bonbons.
He smelled sweet and emptied himself, hugged.
He stooped under the water because he sang.
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Brahmins came for the signet.
Roe deer drank off layers of water.
Crickets still had extra buckets
on their backs, they poured themselves.
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Sometimes, an entire bucket would roll off
a clumsy cricket, with the sponge.
Before, the sponge swam in the water in the bucket
on the cricket's back under the water.
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Light and light do not touch.
The belly of God is between, totally stuffed.
He barely breathes and unfolds.
Sometimes a butterfly's wing tickles him
when he starts to eat his own pupa.
You don't have the right to eat even the filly
of the little paw. Nathan's headboard is in Prague.
God knows if he sleeps peacefully. The little paw
wears out and drinks by the stone. The will flies around
the birch. The firewood is weak from waiting.
Are the green birds already throwing up at Komna?
To want and wish to follow into a duvet.
Push-ups are done there. Towns are built
there and shells are sought, the handcarts
in the mines prepare. Did I comfort
you then? Do you still wonder,
when did I comfort you? There were needles
all around and a spruce and soft moss
and as now: spring was announcing itself.
Strips of thin plate tissue are love
without a cell. Snails gush saliva
and toads. They glaze a cotton wad
for the orthodox church growing on
white sand and from bones. Madam
Yaremenko says there was no right
tone. She missed the czarist gestures
from Bijela Crkva. Katarina liked
Onjegin and Ivan the Terrible lions.
KaradjordjeviÄes killed the Cincars.
The Hellenes lasted on vases.
I reached with a hand under the napkins.
There was straw, and here and there some
gefilte fish. Send me the recipe for borscht.
Sand and rollerblades and a tailor,
he keeps bedsprings in the pigment and the mouth.
It seems he thwarted the upholsterer.
Do you keep flour, too? Do any flowers fall
on its head? In the narrow streets they're tall.
What if a gas pump hit someone
walking the street? He didn't walk. He didn't
walk, it just happened this way, what if
it didn't happen? Little donkeys
keep coming back. They bray before evening.
The door opens, the dung doesn't disturb.
Frogs approach Porta di Leone
and we quelled the mosquito with poplars.
They grew up under Mussolini.
Ron's land is veiled by a padlock.
Men are on guns.
Time doesn't have a dark suit anymore,
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cows have stovepipes in their stomachs.
Multiplied, they give a cleaver.
A white meadow, white millet,
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white millet for brother horses.
I snacked on a strap.
The cave got larger.
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The blueness didn't start to tremble only around
birds, the bird itself turned
blue, constituent.
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He invented a typewriter
on a vacuum, a tunnel in a cave
that failed. Bill Gates
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sealed off his ear. The hut
changes into fear. Fear
opens itself into the dark slippage of cards.
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I wanted to oblige my friend
so he could play bridge.
The pea, too, is a miracle of the Trinity.
Hey, monarch, ferry me across
the river. A nettle nips, a nettle
does not nip, a nettle
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does not die from frost. We gurgle
tar, still unborn
piglet with pretty and white and long
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hair, else
sorrow, sores, pain,
and vertigo.
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Do you also fight for her like a lion?
For screams I'm patriotic.
Sidewalks are kind.
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The corners of sidewalks are kind
to invalids. To return love to the blind.
To make it dewy, to make it
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seen, to make it watered
by their gazes. To return sight to the blind.
I will thrust the smell of river sand.
Parafiled little wretch on a morbid plank.
Bronze radiates. It pours from leaves and creaks,
rends grease.
Phantasia kataleptikè?
Rabbits, snow, bushes, boots leak,
I lie unconscious by the river. Outer space
gulped dumplings. The smell was constant.
Inside we stored pieces of gold and wiped,
wiped river stones.
Is it worth
tipping?
Certainly. Then where is
the sail that cleans the gazelle's leap? We leap
through soot. Through flaming hoops,
twice. The animals' skin crumbles in the cinema.
The slippery surface turns and changes.
The podium creaks. The road is fresh and aches.
The act is luminous. Out of wire, out of
sage, out of gray green puffs of air.
I dreamed Poof had brambles instead of
fur. The foam had patience.
Did you find a chanterelle? With every layer
of night a little coat is pulled on.
The word made the river and the waterfall
and the power plant and the mill. The Mitchourins
already to the Mesopotamians. They rolled
rocks in front of a town gate. They stood
on a hoop. The space between the word
and heralds (the shoes pinched) was changed
by the view. By the pressure on the skin
of olive trees' drums starting to ski on the wilderness.
The poem shines the saw. I don't know it
by heart. The spit is merry and embraced,
soaked with bast. The white one wants, the dowry
wants, you climb and hurtle on spikes.
In front of Agnes Martin's canvas (Pace
Wildenstein) I came across two
dervishes. They were Turks. They had
hair combed like a black apple.
Are white caps humble?
Isn't the strike the sun brings on beams
(laid down with force) too dangerous?
I kiss the earth. Deepen the air
and dust. I shift gears
and stand up. Lapis lazuli blots me.
Only protosynaptic measures have blackened
God's blueness. Nightmare is balsam sleep.
Rivers smell fragrant, the gallows. I'm worth the brow.
Weary and wooden. How are the legs?
Some say they're real.
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Will he snatch a bigger slice of bread of God's love?
The sour cherry is a steamship's body.
Panta rei
sleeps.
Overnight snowfall filled everything.
The pools are emeralds.
I talked to people
with noble mouths.
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They brought cymbals and bronze,
a chafer wrapped in stiff paper,
they swung it in a handcart and sang,
we heard how the fortresses were knocked down.
The dust from the ruins is still damp.
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We burned down and built from
the shit of camels and cows.
Yesterday on Elizabeth Street I saw
a man who had such a hat.
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At Starbucks it truly smells
of the roasteries of Trieste, the aroma
they first carried away to Seattle.
We were still talking about two
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supermodels (about cow dung),
hairstyles, little braids, goggles,
about the carefully outworn,
and I injected into myself
this text into the photo:
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Jorge Vegas, soft shadow friend
whisper fire. Caress the blood
within. Set free the buddha
cat in me, into ginger
haven, sugar stone smile . . .
Penetrate, don't outwit. One iota,
two people's houses. Laughlin. I'm blotting.
From everything wrecked, white gray glances.
The little mill didn't spin. It was all about a heavy
paw. It's purified. Forged by faith and poured.
The little coat is not rickety. It's cast in a green
and silver building. If you break into a chafer's belly
with your head, the water comes springing.
Torna,
which propel hard drives, are from garlic.
As if I'd have more iron inside my palm.
Water is always young, excluded, and self-
pleased. Ken Jacobs arranged the red plateau
on which Norse was written, burning
on Chambers Street. Egypt cut itself.
Noble little grain, farina,
dark edge of gold icons,
it rolls.
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Is the bell mucus, the blackboard stored
with the petition flower?
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Mormons have all the names in the gullet.
But with me the watch is warm, boy-scout-like.
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Jure Detela was an athlete.
All night we sat on the bench in Zvezda Park,
I guarded him and convinced him
not to go and clip the bears' fence.
This was wrestling with an angel.
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His eyes poured out of him. It was rustling
when the morning rose.
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He was comforted, fed,
and willing.
Beheaded.
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As if he did clip the fence.
When I returned from Mexico, I looked like
death. My mouth collapsed
and disintegrated. I was paying a penalty
for my sins, my palate had dissolved.
I could touch my brain with my tongue.
It was painful, horrible, and sweet.
While Svetozar sat outside in the waiting room,
I tore down the instrument case.
No, I am not being precise: he left the office
before me, I only suspected who he was, I didn't even
know him. When I sat in the chair,
my energy tore down the instrument case.
To pass from world to world
means an earthquake. Yesterday he died.
How does the butler configure?
He eats out of a hand. He strokes his nickname,
the number six. The beak is rasped,
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sawdust whistles under right angles. It's yellow
where it isn't cut through. Softly,
we could stuff daisies into it, and as with hair
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and fingernails, there is no pain.
The pain is in the missing part.
In the missing part the impaled daisy
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flutters. Is the butler
then a Venetian mask? Clarissas,
pacing solemnly between the power plant
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and the grilles in Siena.
In Assisi. I was steered into the wheel.
And when I, drowsy on the piazza,
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thought of Pincherle, nibbled
gelati and
fave
and massaged
my heart, I realized
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the nave is empty. There are no side
naves. There is no roof. Between the sky
and the pavement there is not even a tiny circle.
Vanilla, the ruin, house of silence, threads.
The starling stipples the sky and knocks down granite.
It eats stars. Small, dirty boxes
full of worms. Meccas flap.
Dervishes are thimbles on neighbors.
In the hall there's a dome. In the dome
there are boxsprings overturned.
I.e., turned voraciously.
The mind has no swings.
It's wacky, frozen in lianas.
When they gash, they're like doorknobs.
The flame in them burns.
The worms get a tarp on their eyes,
cows eat the millet on the tarp,
not shrubs.
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The louse creeps into them and falls asleep.
What did we fly over?
Which boxes did we fly over?
Which yellow boxes did we fly over?
Vases pull lightbulbs from their mouths, shine in white.
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The clause is pressed into the gums.
Hats cover only undisciplined mice,
the opposite of what we'd expect.
The axis is unavoidable.
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Is that you, caraway seed?
What did we fly over?
At first I was shaking like a switch in water
because of “the chain of accidents.” My second thought
was that I'd gladly be as systematic
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as Swedenborg was. Was the frame clear
and did I accept it, though all the zones
of my body had yet to go through the slot? Immediately afterâ
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I saw it in a flashâangels are censorship
and fog, merely a field of space that hauls you
toward the center. They quickly paled and glued
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in a lump. I felt physical hands,
they caught me gently under the armpits. The air
whirred, but not as if the firm body
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would go through, it was as if someone were dragging me
through milk. They all expected me, though
they noticed my physical presence only
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gradually: first the old, then the middle-aged,