Klemen Pisk

Walking along the Čepa gorge dried me out,
the devil hung out his bridges here
and from his toll booth collected fees from all
who wandered here. The stone wall, on which
I jealously feasted my eyes, made me hungry;
a chill wind blew across the gorge
and my hunger revealed itself fully. Everything
revealed itself, the Čepa also, rippling deep
beneath me, only my hazy caution
entered the inn,
in order to improve on the bad mark
from twenty years ago
given by Mr. Jumbo the teacher.

My fall into the bottomless gorge,
in which those who repeated their class lay killed
and their eternally forgotten
Hausaufgabe and I the traitor
amongst them.

Translated by Robert Koenig

Snail

He then sees a slimy snail behind a shrub – it’s enormous.
He calls out “What a snack it’ll be!” as he prepares the fire
on which he’ll cook the snail. The flames of the fire gnaw
and crack while the snail looks on and on. He is trying
to think of a word that rhymes with “snail.” He finds one.
“Grimail, Grimail!” he shouts. I ask him what it means
because I have never heard such a word.
“Ha ha, you don’t know? So you are the idiot, not I!
Ha ha, you don’t know what they called friends
of the prominent writer, Grimm?” He then throws
himself on the snail - this one was as big as a boar –
and throws it against a hard rock until his spirit expires.
Poor snail! It seems like so short a time ago
since I saw him last, chewing that bitter grass,
grazing amongst the bees on a nearby hill.

Translated by Lena Nemeth

The Move

The package, sent by Lisa Linder, Stiegaregatan 9,
4324 Skovde, Sverige, was never opened. I opened
it after 5 years, when I was rummaging through
my drawers while cleaning. I was moving and whenever
a person moves, they need to account for the past.
I don’t know why I let that much time pass without opening it,
most likely I was trusting my intuition, which had warned
me against danger numerous times.
But now, when I go out, I have nothing to lose.
I ripped open the package, my hands sweaty as they slid over
the yellowed paper and reached inside,
inside her idea. Lisa had sent damp underwear – and a nude
photograph of herself, which still smelled of her perfume.

Lisa? Why.

She doesn’t hear me as she is fishing on the shore
of an icy lake – and every fish that she catches on her hook,
is pierced with the harpoon of mystery.

Translated by Bryan Steinkopf

The Organised Shirt

With monotonous cadence the silvery fabric
heralded the coming crease, whose metal sheeting
boomed out into its rounded belly. A sweet yet mindless
melody led to the ritual coupling of the ace of spades
and the cuff button. The tie breathed heavily, tie tied
according to strict rules, all governed by rigid laws
in patterns that none could break. Along the collar's
stiffness ran the trail of fingerprints, where time and
again the iron had stopped, staining the cotton with
its dirty blackness. Passers-by overcome by the
chequered puking, began to draw together into
an ordered swarm within lines of white.

Translated by George Dudzinski

Valley of Ice

I sat at the equinox glued to a mound of grass
with wet hair, I woke the dead who left the body
a lonesome bossa nova flew from the guitar played
by my hands through your ears perked for everything

you heard the wind move as may beetles’ thoughts
scrape and gouge you a deep wound
the night tormented you, clenched your throat ribs lungs
you heard the rock where the ant trod, the gonging spruce

and the music unfurled like clouds about mountains
hidden from the audience of a soul crippled by thorns
through my other I that splits us at the roots

a leafy wood spreads to that border, valley full of ice
mountain range to the next land, dress below the knees
hair to the waist, shelves from floor to rafters, my strength power – far.

Translated by Christopher Smith

This Day is Unraveled

I patched bags, hats, jackets, shirts; I was a tailor
and I sewed: by night, by day, from dusk till dawn.
I was the one who unstitched my flesh, so you would
see that underneath my skin I am more beautiful, purer.
I was bursting at the seams, coming out of myself;
a completely new, reborn admirer. I was the cloud on your
face, the breath of wind, the mosquito netted window
that you always opened when I came.

Translated by Ewa Skoczylas

Grandfather's Death

With 1994 looming one vernal morning,
dawn's aura stirred colours on the painter's palette
as I sat on a garden bench scribing morning verses.
My forlorn and devoted father gazed fixedly at his own,
who with forehead wrinkled in his last breaths
repeated important proverbs.

And when he died, a bird's longing remained,
tribulating days, Roman silver coins of ten asses
or four sesterii, conscience objections of incestuous
lips and aunt's existential crisis.

But I was not interested in such peripeteia,
still sitting on the garden bench scribing verses.

Poetry is a mimicry, a foolish prophet's sanctuary.
Like a harmless fly, a poet hides in vivid colors
and from a distance with poems guards against
poetic sprites.

Translated by Daniel Paszkiewicz

A Page from the Arctic Wanderer’s Diary

Cover me - drag your cold fingers through the hair on my chest.
Hey you, Snow, my Guardian Angel, save me from going to leaf.
My dear Godmother, Arctic Vixen, pick away my feathers,
shave off the golden fleece of my beard.
Make a soup on my bones so you don’t go down hungry.

Hey you, Mister Sea Lion, my clumsy, toothy friend who moves
like Sumo wrestlers and suffers from psoriasis, know, that you are
not the hero of the psychedelic song, but the one that needs to be
put to sleep and given a ring with a serial number….

Wilderness claimed the seals, the seas froze and the skies lifted
their celestial brow of heavy clouds. My bleeding lips kissed the wind,
ready to accept the legends of cold destiny.
The false moon shone over my igloo.

The one who is alone day and night, the one who turns his ear
to the voice in an empty morning – draw an arrest warrant for the
polar bear on the old piece of paper. It will crunch under your feet
and crampons will pierce the small toe.

Translated by Krystyna Madry-Reed

He Feels It

It’s frightening, when I place your son on a bicycle
and pinch his legs with the old seat or when I carry him down
a steep hill until we fall on his angelic face.
Scratched up and bleeding he runs to you so that you can
disinfect his wounds with white cotton balls and iodine.
You’re furious with me, and sad. Through his tears he is
miserably watching me and taking all the blame upon himself.
And when he calms down, covered in bandages like a mummy,
his mischievous laughter heralds in another Slavic poet.

Translated by Marianna Romaniuk

Old Japanese Tales

The wind glimmers warmly,
beyond the reeds rainbows spring up
and stretch over the rice paddies,
a boy with a little drum flies on a long kite,
poor people have bulging eyes,
tales are here again and again my mother
calls me to lunch. All the Japanese children
in this world sing a song and I sing with them.

I sing a pentatonic blues, all day I
whistle it, no guru can
replace my father,
no teacher's wisdom can
blow out the flame on the match that he
gives me after lighting his pipe.

Translated by Wayles Browne

Fetish

You wear a forte white blouse, revealing an andante stitched bra,
scarlet as a cardinal’s cap. Jeans with Gershwin’s aspiration,
shoes the style of a light canzone, stockings with cacophonic patterns.
I attempt to tune the buttons and relieve them of their stress,
play the harp of the bra, I need only to approach it with my teeth.
It sounds in sharp tones, then softens and opens; the silk lingerie falls
to the drums, uttering a noise. Your breasts – circles of the fifths,
your buttocks – body of the sitar, staccato hard nipples – Scottish bagpipes.
Undressed you are pizzicato sharp in the crotch.
I play with your harmonic – I explore various modes in an attempt
to find the right position. I will come, tuned in major, and will relax in minor.
We will do some saxophoning.

Translated by Mark Ordon

Then

She said she'd like some chocolate.
Then I said that I didn't have any chocolate.
Then she said I should make an effort for her.
Then I said that we could do something more intelligent.
Then she told me that she didn't know anything
more intelligent than eating chocolate.
Then I said that she's an idiot.
Then she said that she's going home.
Then she went home.
Then I went to buy chocolate and caught up with her on her way.
Then I shoved the chocolate down her throat.
Then I asked her, "You'll eat, will you?"
Then she was quiet finally, because she had a mouth full of chocolate.

Translated by Michael Zawistowski

I Feel the Rythm

Night club – medium cool, as many guests as seeds
in a one -kilo pumpkin, sticky tracks of strangers, sprang up
from beery leaks, reddish emptiness on a spotty face,
stumbling among electrified cables, Bulgarian nodding
and clapping with greetings, snapping one’s fingers.

They are swaying nervously from imaginary pleasures, when,
with a fifth increased by a chord, I am playing the whole tone scale.
Changed in a fraction of second I become a mixolydian
construct. Musician’s sweaty life is a painful feeling
of timeless dying of tones, permanent repetition of a scheme
and banging his head against the wall after failed improvisation.

I fraternize with mosquitoes flying around the spotlights, I will die
fallen, I will perish in rot of disgust, go down with leprosy, go blind by
marching of cufflinks along the guitar. My life broken three times,
my longing modulated four times- these are things worth
breathing.

I give a jazz apple pie, I baked it on that day,
when I realized how wretched is to help you , unbridled.
May I smear you with a blues, anoint with a cantata, may I pour
a classical twelve-syllable over you, you won’t obey me. From me you only
want and don’t want, want and don’t want, want and don’t want, this rhythm
in which it confirms with negation and affirmatively disappears.

Translated by Malgorzata Wiklacz

Beatles

I am walking in the cave discovering objects
they left behind them: the guitar –symmetrical,
for the left- handed owner. I am left handed too,
I suppose. My guitar is as symmetrical, as it is made specially
for left-handed. Creation of one craftsman who received
a commission to make the guitar. I wonder if Paul had to
turn a bridge over and would have his own
English craftsman whom he visited and ordered the guitar.
I am walking along the narrow corridor of the cave.
I am reaching the small, damp place. The Indian Sitar left by George
stands in a corner. This is an instrument that allows for
different intervals in music, the smallest unit
is not a semitone any more but a quarter tone, it is that
ultimate line, far threshold that human ear
will hear yet. I am walking further to the next room.
I am staring at a half-smoked marijuana fag.
It seems to me as though it was Ringo’s but something tells me
that it was John who smoked it.

Translated by Teresa Majewska

Tova and the Troll

I grab a little troll, shut it
in a suitcase, inside the suitcase
noise can be heard, Tova asks me what it is,
I say: I don't know Then it is night,
we go to the shore, I carry the suitcase.

We sit on a rock. Tova looks at me;
She is crazy and very beautiful.
I get up and look for a flat stone.
"Look, Tova, how many times I can skip a rock!"
I toss. Plum! No skips.
We laugh, then I open the suitcase and say:
"Look, Tova, what I brought you!"

I put the troll on her tummy,
it runs towards the navel. The navel
is a cave for the troll, in which
it slowly wakes up, and sea
salt, which is collected in the navel,
is salt from the cave.

Translated by Jerry Dean

Helena

Napoleon arrived on your island
and was surprised by the rich nature you possess.
The straw tickling the bottom of the ditch
irritated you so that you came out of the ground.
The light leaned towards the morning
and you came and surrendered yourself to it.

And I walked with you and asked myself,
whether there are also iguanas on your island,
whether Darwin grows flowers here, fragrant woodruffs,
whether there is harmony between the windmills and the crayfish,
and where the man is, whose tracks are in the sand.

Then I met him and looked him deeply in the eyes.
I stood face to face with a dwarf
who claimed that I was taller but not greater than him.

And now we’re playing chess on your island, in front of your ditch.
The island -your skin on which we place our figures
and you, heavenly feast, are smiling at both of us.

How am I supposed to be Napoleon since I’m neither General Kutuzov
nor the Minister of Police, Fouché? Since I’m not a wise man with a grey beard
or even an ordinary sailor, whom you could love in ports.
I’m just a helper of the poor, who stretch out their hands in search of pearls
on your feet.

Translated by David Lynch

Ding

Somewhere deep inside crowded thoughts
high in the skies of undreamed kingdom
lives a sanctimonious ding.

In the glass pieces of nerve endings,
inside the clatter of brain's interior
in the cytoplasm, in the protoplasm
erythrocytes, leukocytes- ubiquitous ding.

Shuddering in my bed
I am pulling my thighs close,
cramming my head on the pillow to silence
the pain he gives me, biting.

He puffed up like a turkish pasha
and struggles me with his severe strictness,
synthesis of nasty phonemes

I kick, I kneel, I cry, I tremble
I smash the furniture
I lose balance
I stagger toward the door,
to escape him

While the ding is yellow and triply rhymed.

Translated by Urszula Kawecka

The Guitar

When naked, so chequered you are, when starched,
you explode into plasma of sounds, temples are built
within you, frets touched, fingers planted,
the touch, the touch of fire, I worship you because
you are insane and musicologicaly beautiful.
The countess of making sense, the pear of courtesy,
crawling through the dance floor you get smashed
and go for repairs, and tuned you will cordially
rest tomorrow on the stage. Through the wire-rich
installation I am calling you one gorgonzola morning,
oh dancing leg, I want to get your heart transplanted
into me. Like velvet we look at each other, your
devilish shapes last in your rounded tensity.
I would pulverise you with one hand movement,
hysterical shavings would whisk up in the air,
your silk, planted in my nails, is nowhere to find,
sneaking parasites between us, the spruce borer is
twisting and turning the double bass, nits of worms
are biting the wooden partition. I want to pass by
with you, until the end of strings, amen.

Translated by Urszula Srebrowska

The Hermit and the Essence

A hermit was engulfed in an avalanche and waited
under the snow to be saved. However,
no one came. If only
a St. Bernard appeared with a little barrel of rum
hanging from his neck and dug him out – thought the hermit – or perhaps,
he believed – God lived somewhere in the mountains
and would watch over his fate,
he allowed himself to contemplate the insignificance of his
existence, how short-lived it is, its heavy extravagance,
and how it is impossible to discern the variety of its natural forms

The hermit closed his eyes.
still concious;
he felt that snow surrounded him on all sides
he suddenly understood how simple
it is to live – realizing this only now
underneath the snow

The hermit was silent.
Fighting in his thoughts with snow and Earth.

And the Earth turned according to plan
in order to consume him.

Translated by Krzysztof Pawlowski

Spain 1999