Sheds blood
Under the constant blows
Of a menacing right hand
While the woman
Who is simultaneously a hand
Bleeds
From the interminable belly dance
Of the revolutionary Carmagnole
While from the bulbs of sweat
A fiery blossom grows
And while the burly body
Of the imposing wrestler
Legs astraddle
One and the same barricaded spot
Writhes
And draws a shadow on the fences
Between yards
Where his own python-like muscles restraining Laocoön
Convulse
Every roof
Of this
Quiet and idyllic village
In the reddish dusk pulls on
A crimson Phrygian cap
The Plowman
On the endless horizon
Where a lone bent birch forms
A frayed whip
Stuck
Into hard mounds of anthracite
Studding the entire valley
Covered with luxurious hair
Untouched by comb
Trudges
A marvelous galley slave
Lugging
Before him
Tipped with a plowshare
An enormous
Penis
Slanting down
Under his gaunt stomach
And hindering his every step
Digging into the loose topsoil
On the feet
Of this wretch
Shod
In potato sacks
And weighed down
By two balls
That painfully spring into the air
On impact
With stones
Earthworms
Writhe under
Bad weather has formed
Deep scars
Overgrown
With the overburdened hulls
Of last year’s rye
A praying mantis springs from into the air
Whenever the bare heels of the enormous walker
Who melancholically gazes
To the vineyard
Where a small windmill
Monotonously measures out his time
Sink into the earth
A partridge leaves
Its ruined nest
And looks for sure shelter
In the plowman’s thick beard
Covered in slivers of quail eggshells and weeds
The grisly sodomite
With a fatal tool
Lightning has engraved
With the wrinkled stigmata
Of eternal damnation
Condemned
To plow
Through the stubbled womb
Of the parched earth
Strains the muscles on his pate
Covered in the icy traces of a hailstorm
And like a furrow
Spreads open
The loose folds of large lips
Swarming with sexton beetles
Carrying off a grisly tadpole
While doing this work
Involving the mortification of flesh
Ignited in a blaze
By the sun’s corrosive heat
A smile
Plays on the lips
Of the voluntary slave
Making them
A perch
Taken by
A colorful butterfly
And a woodlark
That devours it
The magical plowman
Whose pant buttons have long been motley crown vetches
Sinks to his knees every now and then
Although the broad-leafed whip
Waving in the wind
And flailing his naked back
Spurs him on
So that
He steps forward again
Gnawing at his overhanging lower lip
A drowsy cricket
Lounges on under a bit of turf
Then again
Long strides
Flung into the air
With ball and chain
Protecting some thorns
Break off pebbles
From the unctuous clay
A steel tip
Embedded there
Piercing
The rugged crust
Of a barren potato field
Of infertile soil
That has retained a number of unmistakable traces
From when it was once a riverbed
The mythological plowman
Occasionally manages
To dig in the sandy terrain
A well
That encloses
Within its round pursed lips
The plowshare covered by a lump of dirt
Stuck
In the depths of intractable soil
In the fixed eye
Of the hulking laborer
Condemned to wade through mire
From dawn
To dusk
Until a deep sleep
Hurls him inertly onto a slanted stake
A distant windmill
Of boundless vertigo
And migrating storks
Their sharp gazes fascinated by a far-off chimney
Spin
Now as if younger by half a century
The exhausted slave to himself tries to fling into the air
The plow
A part of his chimerical being
Yet unable to conquer his burden
A horrible weariness
Presses him ever lower into the gravel
Which rustles and rasps
While the voracious nostalgia
Of the praying mantis
Fiddles
With the magisterial stamina
Of a big toe
Turned into fleshy foliage
On a lame
Isinglass-flecked
Leg
And while the praying mantis
Changed through benevolent mimesis
Into an exquisite virginal pea pod
Arouses
An accretion of saliva
In the mouth
Of the master
Of sleepless expectation
Treading on a whalebone of roots
Shoulders always shaky
This Promethean
Three-dimensional
Slightly rheumatic
Ochre-splattered
Short-of-breath
Bony
And robust
Maniac
Spits
The last remainder of his sterile
Saliva
Soaked with lark droppings colored by raspberries
Without ceasing to upturn by his tedious plowing
Mouse holes
In which the earth lives
Its intrauterine life
He also sees
Dreamily
Holding his breath
How sparrow hawks
Seize
With their nimble bills
The frothy
Flecks
How they fight for them
Fiercely pecking each other
And how these flecks
Tinged crimson
With the blood
Of the grappling raptors
Descend
In an evenly accelerated dive
Into the very center
Of the furrow
Which quickly folds over them
But at the instant
When these raptors
Incapable of flight from sudden passion
Descend
Upon the twig-covered pate
Of the saliva spitter’s head
To settle an ongoing fight
And to cover with an ornamental cardinal’s hat
Made from golden entrails
The fanatic’s tonsure
Of late
Set upon
By the beaks clacking solemnly
Now transformed
Into bone earrings
The imbecile giant
Bursts
Into wheezing laughter
So
That
The two
Ankle-bound
Balls
On two
Errant boulders
Thrown into his path by a storm
Shake
And so these two boulders
Impressed with the enormous buttocks
Of the grandparents
Of the dead man walking
Disintegrate into red gravel
The windmill
With blades
Washed
By waves of this laughter
Ceases its monotonous hurdy-gurdy tune sounding like a ditty
And stops measuring out
Work time
The frayed whip
Of the solitary birch
Simultaneously ceases to play its role
As
The rhythmic and merciless flagellation of the condemned’s back
And the cursed laugher
From whose lips drift
Indian summers
That flutter over the wooded horizon
Resembling a decomposed horse
Falls
In a great arc
Belly up
Onto his rachitic back
Unwittingly freeing
From the clutches of a mole cricket
The instrument of his damnation
A pointed beet
A pebble has bitten into
On the horizon
Trembles
A giant hand lowering from the clouds
Locking something
And the agonizing pupils
Of the plowman
Suffering a stroke
See the cowering figure
Of the sodomite
Who slumbers
On the stomach of a dead horse
And whose brow is garlanded
As with ribbon
By the mantis praying the Angelus
SHADOWPLAYS
Dusk
A shoe lies in a ditch
Scavenged by a maggot
With a kind of twitch
Blood trickles from it
Through holes in the toe
Where mold has perched
A rose starts to grow
A rose from the church
The setting sun casts
A gleam on the shoe
Fading fast
In a small black pool
A mole cricket passes on
This splendid little catch
Unsteadily resting upon
A writhing earthworm patch
The mole cricket lunges
To catch a water strider
Just as it plunges
Into the evening star
Reflected in this small black pool
Where a scorpion is concealed
Shadows swim in the shoe
Peace comes to the world
Over backwaters
A bat flies with wings unfurled
The Flypaper
Right above the clay cup
Of coffee for grandmother
There is hung up
A strip of black flypaper
A bird flew through the window
And glued its maw
To a second fly
The first was getting nibbled by
A mirror
Portrays
This gruesome theater
As if in a haze
To the swallow
Cawing like a pest
At sheep and goats
From the heart of its nest
Which shakes
In a stable
Like the coffee that makes
A puddle on the table
Tipped over the second
When in the cup went
The fallen half-rotten
Fly-covered serpent
The Snare
In an abyss
Rising into the air
Caught amiss
In a fox’s snare
A beautiful nymph
With a dying topaz gaze
Trapped when taking a swim
Her body bare to the waist
Her right hand
As her heart bursts
Quivers in blood
And she gives birth
To a small child
Without eyes
Who falls at the end of a thread
Down a wobbly hillside
Right into the maw
Of a wild boar
Digging at dawn
In the black moor
For the forest sprite
A tomb of dirt
Curled up in a bright
Bloodstain on a shirt
The Cask
This black cask
No one peeks in
This black cask
Blushes at evening
As if aghast
Ah what a task
Has this black cask
This black cask
Is a cask for wine
Oh how could it not be aghast
This black cask for wine
As if it were aghast
And recalling the past
In a cowshed corner it reclines
In the old days endowed
This black cask with a tap
Hanging there now
A large cobweb trap
A chicken taps
On this black cask
Red wine once in its lap
This black cask
Bellows and smells foul
How could it not be aghast
This empty black cask
An odorous fowl
Sits on it and basks
Oh how could it not be aghast
This leaky black cask
The Tuffet
This tiny tuffet
Will always be petite
While those who used it for a seat
Grew only to shrink
This tiny tuffet
Where old grandma is set
Will soon fall to the ground
Like those who sat down
Luckily this tiny tuffet
On which grandma snuffs it
Is not a tooth
Just processed tree root
If it were a tooth
In the changing lady’s mouth
It would still stay forever tiny
And so would be buried
Till on the tuffet’s tinder
Falls an oven fire’s cinder
While grandma sits sipping rum
And it ignites her home
All in time all in time
Granny will fall and break her spine
And the tiny tuffet
Will still be petite
Like those who used it for a seat
And grew only to shrink
The Spool
The spool on the sewing machine
Is a source of worry
For the spider unseen
In the corner it scurries
To avoid the pedaling foot
Conducting up and down
A steady beat for the output
Meanwhile the town
Through curtains made
Of crimson lace
Across the lap splayed
A kitten plays
The town untangles the spool that whirls
Embedded in the yard outside
And blinds the girl
Taking the white revolutions in stride
So she yawns
Stretching her slouching spine
And fills her mouth of dawns
With shadows of cobwebs entwined
This treading on the floor
Really takes its toll
If she yawns once more
She will swallow th
e spider whole
The Anthill
Say what you must
Say what you will
As if she said forest
As if she said anthill
In that forest
All go astray with errant flowers in their tracks
Many times lost
Forever lost the way back
In that anthill
So low as if dug by a mole
All disappear in the blood puddle
Death comes for all
Say what you must
Say what you will
As if he said forest
As if he said anthill
Even if no mist and the sun is warm
In that forest dusk is always near
The ants all swarm
There are no birds here
Say what you must
Say what you will
As if she said forest
As if he said anthill
The Gloves
There shines a candle
Above a thousand-page book
Always to the sound of death knells
Gloves hang from a hook
Nobody knows
Whence they came or
How the choir chose
Whom it sings for
This thousand-page tome
As the death knell chimes
Turns pages on its own
Sprinkled with tears sometimes
Dog-eared pages
Crease themselves
And catch falling midges
From the uncanny gloves
That marvelous leather pair
With fingers that tap
They appear
Like two hands clasped
From their veins of blue
While sobbing breaks the calm
Blood shows through
And gushes from the palm
The Lamp
Around the lamp in the stairway
Lighting the deserted chateau
Built in the style of Art Nouveau
Parades of shadows sway
Shadow after shadow bends down
In pairs kneeling
Convulsively reeling
The Absolute Gravedigger Page 4
