by Vasko Popa
Or at least blink
No one is to budge under that stone
Both of them strain and strain
And grow tired and fall asleep
And only in sleep their hair stands up
(This game lasts forever)
Hunter
Someone enters without knocking
Enters into someone’s ear
And exits through the other
Comes with matchstick-like step
The step of a lit matchstick
And dances within his head
He’s the boss
Someone enters without knocking
Enters into someone’s ear
And doesn’t come out through the other
He’s done for
Ashes
Some are nights others stars
Each night lights its own star
And dances a black dance around it
Until the star burns out
The nights then divide among themselves
Some become stars
Others go on being nights
Again each night lights its own star
And dances a black dance around it
Until the star burns out
The last night becomes both star and night
It sets fire to itself
And dances the black dance around itself
After the Game
At last the hands grab the belly
So the belly won’t burst with laughter
Only there’s no belly
One hand barely lifts itself
To wipe the cold sweat from its forehead
There’s no forehead either
The other hand reaches for the heart
So the heart won’t leap out of the chest
But there’s no heart either
Both hands fall
They fall idly into the lap
There’s no lap either
In the palm of one hand
Now the rain falls
From the other the grass grows
What can I tell you
1954
Give Me Back My Rags
Just pop into my head
My thoughts the better to scratch your cheek
Just show yourself to me
So my eyes can yap back at you
Just open your mouth
My silence to bust your chops
Just remind me of yourself
So my memory can dig a hole beneath your feet
That’s how things stand between us
1
Give me back my rags
My rags of pure dream
Of silky smiles
Striped premonitions
And lace-like sinews
My rags of polka-dot hope
Of burning desire
Motley glances
And the skin from my face
Give me back my rags
I’m asking you nicely
2
Listen you freak
Off with your white kerchief
We know one another
Together from childhood
Lapping from the same bowl
Sleeping in the same bed
With you evil-eyed knife
Walking this crooked world
With you snake in the shirt
Listen double-crosser
Take off that white kerchief
Why pretend to one another
3
I won’t carry you piggyback
I won’t take you where you tell me
Even if I were shod in gold
Harnessed to three wheeled cart of the wind
Even with a rainbow for a bridle
Don’t try to bribe me
I won’t even with feet in my pocket
Threaded through a needle tied into a knot
Or whittled into an ordinary stick
Don’t try to scare me
I won’t even roasted or burnt to a crisp
Raw or salted
Or even in a dream
Don’t go on kidding yourself
None of your tricks work I won’t
4
Out of my walled-in infinity
The dancing ring of stars around my heart
Out of my morsel of sunlight
The sidesplitting sea of my blood
My flow my ebb
Out of my beached silence
Get out I said get out
Out of my living chasm
The bare ancestral tree within me
Get out how long do I have to shout
Out of my head exploding into pieces
Out out just get out
5
You get kewpie doll notions
I bathe them in my blood
Dress them in the rags of my skin
Make swings out of my hair for them
Toy carts from my spine
Kites from my eyebrows
Butterflies from my smiles
Wild beasts from my teeth
To hunt and to kill time
What game is this anyway
6
Damn your root blood and crown
And everything else in your life
Every dried-up image in your brain
Every burning eye on your fingertips
And every step you take
Into three pots of foul-tempered water may you sink
Into three stoves of truth-telling fire
Three ditches without name or milk
Icy breath against your throat
Against the stone beneath your left tit
And razor-sharp bird in that stone
Swoop blackest of blackbirds into the lair of nothing
Into the hungry scissors of beginnings
Into the womb of heaven don’t I know it
Damn your seed sap and glitter
Darkness and the dot at my life’s end
And everything else in the world
7
What happened to my rags
You won’t give them back you won’t
I’ll scorch your eyebrows
You won’t be invisible to me always
I’ll mix day and night in your skull
You’ll come beating your head on my little door
I’ll pare your singing fingernails
You won’t chalk hopscotch on my brain
I’ll hound the fog out of your bones
To slurp hemlock off your tongue
You’ll see what I’ll do
8
So you want us to love each other
You can knead me out of my ashes
The ruins of my laughter
The remains of my boredom
You can doll-face
You can grab me by the braid of oblivion
Hug my night in its empty shirt
Kiss and kiss my echo
You don’t even know how to love
9
Run monster
Our footprints bite one another
In the dust behind us
We’re not meant for each other
I see through you stalk of ice
Pass through you from end to end
No hope for this game
How did we ever mix our rags
Give them back what do you want with them
Foolishly they fade on your shoulders
Hand them over scram into your nowhere
Run monster from a monster
Where are your eyes
There’s a monster here too
10
May your tongue turn black
Your noon your hope
All black only my fear white
My wolf at your throat
May the storm be your bed
My terror your pillow
Wide be the meadow of your restlessness
May your every bite burn
Your teeth turn to wax
Chew glutton as much as you please
May your wind be mute
your water your flowers
Everything in the world mute
Only the gnashing of my teeth loud
My hawk landing on your heart
Let your mother have one less horror
11
I wiped your face off my face
Tore your shadow off my shadow
Levelled the hills within you
Crumpled your plains into hills
Made your seasons quarrel
Kicked the earth’s corners from you
Coiled my life’s path around you
My overgrown impassable path
Now let’s see you try to meet me
12
Enough of your sweet-talking immortelles
Of your candied trifles
I don’t want to hear and know nothing
Enough enough of everything
I’ll say my final enough
Stuff my own mouth with earth
Grind my teeth
I’ll shut you up skull-lapper
Shut you up once and for all
I’ll be just as I am
Without root branch or crown
I’ll stand leaning on myself
On my own bumps
I’ll be the stake driven into you party-pooper
Into you muddle-head
That’s all I can be
Don’t you ever come back
13
Don’t fool with me monster
You hid a knife under your scarf
Stepped over the line tripped me up
You spoiled the game
For my heaven to turn upside down
The sun to smash my head
My own rags to be scattered
Never fool with another monster
Give me back my rags
And I’ll give back yours
1955
The Yawn of Yawns
The Stargazer’s Legacy
His words were left after him
More beautiful than the world
No one dares to look at them for long
They wait at curves of centuries
Mightier than people
Who can even say them
They lie on dumb earth
Heavier than the bones of life
Death wasn’t able
To carry off as its dowry
No one can lift them
No one can drop them
The falling stars tuck their heads
In shadows his words cast
Forgetful Number
Once upon a time there was a number
Pure and round like the sun
But lonely very lonely
It started to calculate by itself
It divided multiplied
Subtracted and added up
But stayed always alone
It stopped calculating then
And shut itself away
In its round sunlit innocence
The burning traces of its calculations
Stayed outside
They began to chase each other in the dark
To divide themselves while multiplying
To subtract themselves while adding
That’s how it goes in the dark
No one was left to ask him
To call back his numbers
And to erase them
Proud Error
Once upon a time there was an error
So ridiculous so minute
No one could have paid attention to it
It couldn’t stand
To see or hear itself
It made up all sorts of nonsense
Just to prove
It didn’t really exist
It imagined a space
To display all its proofs in
And time to guard them
And the world to see them
All that it imagined
Was not so ridiculous
Or so insignificant
But was of course in error
Was anything else possible
Wise Triangle
Once upon a time there was a triangle
It had three sides
The fourth it kept concealed
In its red-hot middle
By day it climbed its three peaks
And admired its middle
At night it took it easy
In one of its three angles
Each dawn it watched its sides
Turn into three incandescent wheels
And vanish in the blue of no return
It took out its fourth side
Kissed it and broke it three times
To hide it again in its old place
And again have only three sides
And again climb each day
Its three peaks
To admire its middle
While at night it rested
In one of its three angles
Echo Turned Stone
Once upon a time there were so many echoes
They were slaves of one voice
Building him arches
The arches tumbled down
They were built crooked
Their dust covered them
They gave up the dangerous work
Turned to stone out of hunger
They flew stone-like
To find and scatter the lips
From which the voice came
They flew God knows how long
Blind fools didn’t they see
That they flew brushing the lips
They were seeking
The Tale About a Tale
Once upon a time there was a tale
It came to the end
Before its beginning
And began after its end
Its heroes entered it
After their death
And left it
Before their birth
Its heroes spoke
Of some kind of heaven some kind of earth
Spoke all kinds of things
Only they didn’t say
What they themselves didn’t know
That they were heroes from a tale
A tale that ends
Before it begins
And begins
After it has ended
The Yawn of Yawns
Once upon a time there was a yawn
Neither under a palate nor under a hat
Neither in the mouth nor anywhere else
It was bigger than all things
Bigger even than its own bigness
From time to time
Its dense night its hopeless night
Would glitter out of despair
Someone would think there were stars
Once upon a time there was a yawn
Boring as any yawn
And it still seems not to have ended
Heaven’s Ring
Stargazer’s Death
He had to die they say
Stars were closer to him
Even than people themselves
The ants ate him they say
He thought stars give birth to ants
And ants to stars
So he filled his house with ants
His flirts in heaven
Cost him his head they say
And that ridiculous rumor about a dagger
With human fingerprints
They say he found himself
Literally out of this world
And went to find a sunflower
Where every heart’s every star’s road meet
He just had to die they say
Heaven’s Ring
Ring nobody’s ring
How did you get lost
Fell from heaven somewhere
Everywhere more likely than somewhere
Why did you marry so soon
Your old glow
To your young hollowness
They neither remember you
Nor their wedding night
Your glow has taken to drink
Your
hollowness has put on weight
And again you’re lost
Here’s my ring finger
Come and find peace on it
Good for Nothing
You slept good for nothing
And dreamt you were something
Something caught fire
The flames writhed
In their blind suffering
You woke up good for nothing
Warmed your back
On a flame from a dream
You didn’t see the flame’s suffering
Whole worlds of suffering
Your back is nearsighted
The flame went out
Suffering got its eyes back
Then blissfully it too went out
Orphan Absence
You didn’t have a real father
The day you first saw the world within you
Your mother was not at home
It was an error you were born
Built like an empty gorge
You smell of absence
Alone you gave birth to yourself
You spin with your rags on fire
Break your heads one after the other
Jump in and out of your mouths
To rejuvenate your old error
Bend down naked if you can
To the last letter of the alphabet
And follow where its tracks lead
I get the feeling little orphan
That they lead
Toward an unknown presence
The Shadow Maker
You pace back and forth
Along your private infinity
Head to heel and back
You’re your own source of light
The zenith is in your head
In your heel is your night
At sunset you let your shadows out
To lengthen to distance themselves
To work miracles and create scandals
And bow down only to themselves
At zenith you shrink the shadows
To their proper size
You teach them to bow to you
And as they do to disappear
You pace around here even today
But the shadows won’t let us see you
The Starry Snail
You crawled after the rain
The rain of stars
They made a house for you
Out of their bones
