Woods and Chalices (5 page)

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.

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.

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.

T
OMAŽ
Å 
ALAMUN
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.

B
RIAN
H
ENRY
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.