The dust from the ruins is still damp.
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.
At Starbucks it truly smells
of the roasteries of Trieste, the aroma
they first carried away to Seattle.
We were still talking about two
supermodels (about cow dung),
hairstyles, little braids, goggles,
about the carefully outworn,
and I injected into myself
this text into the photo:
Jorge Vegas, soft shadow friend
whisper fire. Caress the blood
within. Set free the buddha
cat in me, into ginger
haven, sugar stone smile . . .
Shepherd, You are Just Learning
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.
The Cube That Spins and Sizzles,
Circumscribes The Circle
Noble little grain, farina,
dark edge of gold icons,
it rolls.
Is the bell mucus, the blackboard stored
with the petition flower?
Mormons have all the names in the gullet.
But with me the watch is warm, boy-scout-like.
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.
His eyes poured out of him. It was rustling
when the morning rose.
He was comforted, fed,
and willing.
Beheaded.
As if he did clip the fence.
The Man I Respected
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.
The Hidden Wheel of Catherine of Siena
How does the butler configure?
He eats out of a hand. He strokes his nickname,
the number six. The beak is rasped,
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
and fingernails, there is no pain.
The pain is in the missing part.
In the missing part the impaled daisy
flutters. Is the butler
then a Venetian mask? Clarissas,
pacing solemnly between the power plant
and the grilles in Siena.
In Assisi. I was steered into the wheel.
And when I, drowsy on the piazza,
thought of Pincherle, nibbled
gelati and fave and massaged
my heart, I realized
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.
White Cones
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.
Horses and Millet
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.
The louse creeps into them and falls asleep.
Henry of Toulouse, Is That You?
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.
The clause is pressed into the gums.
Hats cover only undisciplined mice,
the opposite of what we’d expect.
The axis is unavoidable.
Is that you, caraway seed?
What did we fly over?
New York–Montreal Train,
24 January, 1974
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
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 after—
I saw it in a flash—angels are censorship
and fog, merely a field of space that hauls you
toward the center. They quickly paled and glued
in a lump. I felt physical hands,
they caught me gently under the armpits. The air
whirred, but not as if the firm body
would go through, it was as if someone were dragging me
through milk. They all expected me, though
they noticed my physical presence only
gradually: first the old, then the middle-aged,
then the young. As if someone with a rheostat
had broadened their field of vision.
Some reported (let me know)
that they were carrots, and that their scraped
skin was already in the earth. Some felt clearly
that they must go only headfirst through
the waterfall. I was interested, they were here
by some selection, but this thought died away because
they stopped it and I couldn’t utter it.
It was like stopping a drop that falls
into water and then spreads in circles.
Clear waves, I traveled with them.
A solid lump (above my head)
licked and flooded me with pity
and delight. A strand (a cone) coming from
this lump pulled me apart,
spread me horizontally, though I was the same.
I knew: they have other sources, infinitely
more powerful, infinitely more tranquil.
I noticed an apparent affinity in dress.
Veils (clouds) at the height of the chest. I didn’t walk
along the ground, but along something hanged, resembling
ice or glass (optically), though I felt it all:
the moss, the parquet, the grass, the asphalt (green!).
I didn’t see this with eyes but with skin,
as if the skin were watching. At the same time I read Haiku,
I. G. Plamen, and for some time The Village Voice.
I was in the train and looking through the window, reading again.
In an instant I grasped everything. Language is “articulated” and “mute”
at the same time, it occurs in tepid flashes. Accidents
are the humus. As if ping-pong balls would fly
in all directions at once and massage you.
The West
There’s no Kowalski in a cookie, in the dark there’s only
le sucre. The measure, gray little measure, three.
I box the fruit to burst the fruit. The gush
is in the wretch. The moon is in the extinct. Tiny frogs
are seamstresses, they unstitch. Does grief shout in the valley?
Does it rebound off radiators? Indians
who rebound from the countryside with candlesticks
and a pickaxe. You fall on Belarus and turn
in the seaweed. A stain, like patchwork, leaves,
gathering by naked trunks. Exceptionally
with blinkers. Exceptionally with a hand, exceptionally
with a foot, sails cross themselves.
A salmon rushes toward semen. Does it spit out
a bomb and the river and the earth?
Not everyone is planed behind the house. It’s important,
what the entrance to the underworld is like.
If toadstools faded. He tugged his arm inward.
He lowered his altitude. He fell from a horse
long ago. Needles are on the ground again, where
yesterday was a cherry tree. In Bavaria
they learned how to throw the mortar. To make it
radiant when it drops from the house.
Eyes, a spirit taken on a plate, the fever calms.
You climb because you need solitude.
You need solitude because of the edge.
In the cellar there are little birds shifting from leg
to leg. You burn only Roman buildings.
I hurled myself onto cushions. First we hugged,
then kissed, then stripped,
then dressed. I wouldn’t allow it. I wouldn’t
shut him in the lens. We only held hands
like two little girls. He boils
monkeys, he strained himself, too.
Leaves had not started to fall. It’s cheaper
if they move him. At the same time he’s filled with flour
and sand and I don’t know how to read signals.
Publication Acknowledgments
Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following publications, in which these poems first appeared: Blackbird: “Ancestor,” “Colombia,” “Marasca,” “Perfection,” “Washington”; Black Warrior Review: “The Hidden Wheel of Catherine of Siena”; Boston Review: “You Are at Home Here”; Circumference: “New York-Montreal Train, 24 January, 1974”; Conjunctions: “Arm Out and Point the Way,” “The Linden Tree,” “Pessoa Scolding Whitman”; Crazyhorse: “Mother and Death”; Cutbank: “Along Grajena River,” “At low tide . . . ,” “Baruzza,” “Blue Wave,” “Fallow Land and the Fates”; Denver Quarterly: “The King Likes the Sun”; Fence: “Olive Trees”; Field: “Offspring and the Baptism”; Gulf Coast: “The Catalans, the Moors,” “The Dead”; Jacket: “Coat of Arms,” “Fiery Chariot”; The Modern Review (Canada): “The Kid from Harkov,” “Mills,” “Paleochora,” “Washing in Gold”; New Ohio Review: “Porta di Leone,” “Vases”; North American Review: “And on the Slopes of La Paz”; The New Republic: “Persia”; Octopus: “In the Tongues of Bells,” “The Lucid Slovenian Green”; The Paris Review: “We Lived in a Hut, Shivering with Cold”; Poetry Review (UK): “The Man I Respected,” “Scarlet Toga”; Subtropics: “Boiling Throats”; turnrow: “The West.”
All poems were translated by Brian Henry and the author, except “Academy of American Poets,” “Ancestor,” “At low tide . . . ,” “Car,” “The Catalans, the Moors,” “Coat of Arms,” “Colombia,” “Fiery Chariot,” “Holy Science,” “The Man I Respected,” “New York-Montreal Train, 24 January, 1974,” “Persia,” “Pessoa Scolding Whitman,” “Scarlet Toga,” “Washing in Gold,” “Washington,” and “You Are at Home Here,” which were translated by Brian Henry.
About the Author
TOMAŽ ŠALAMUN was born in 1941 in Zagreb. He has published over thirty books of poetry and frequently teaches at American universities, including Pittsburgh, Richmond, and Texas.
About the Translator
BRIAN HENRY has published five books of poetry, including Quarantine (nominated for the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize), The Stripping Point, and Astronaut, which also appeared in Slovenian. He has co-edited Verse magazine since 1995. He reviews poetry for the New York Times Book Review, the Times Literary Supplement, the Boston Review, Jacket, and other publications. He teaches at the University of Richmond in Virginia.
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