NIGHT BUS

I admire the smiles

of the wax figures

and the drunks.

Their faith.

Their humility.

Their precision.

Their infallible wisdom

determined by the office of normalization.

I admire

their wallpapered souls

full of light and brocade.

Their responsibility and legality

surpassing

the price of taxis and wine.

I’m terrified by the indifference

with which they listen

to the heavy breathing of the last trolley buses.

____________________________________

SUMMER

The sun smashes our windows.

An urgent song reaches us from the street.

On the cellophane sky

steam condenses.

Unconfirmed reports are reproduced

about the wind.

The trees are the first to begin to talk

about the two of us.

_____________________________ 

AN EMERGENCY LANDING IN YOUR HAIR

Planes got it into their heads

that they were better than ships,

but pride comes before a fall.

The sadness of victory

is unbearable.

In the darkness of your hair

glitter the tiny wrecks

of airships

and to the bottom of your eyes

sink sparkling mysteries.

Speechlessly

- like the smile on your lips

I’m awaiting my opportunity.

 
_____________________________

A BIG CLEAR OUT

Towels are the things

which will survive us.

Shirts will remind us.

Suits and coats

will remain after us.

So many things,

to which will be added

just the dust

into which we change.

FAMILY STILL LIFE

I say in vain

to my wife

that she can’t nag

genius.

So I’ve recorded this

in written form

for future generations

as advice for death and life, too.

 ______________________________

A DICTIONARY OF FOREIGN DREAMS

At the beginning it was like a dream.

She said,

“Have at least one dream with me.

You’ll see – it’ll be a dream

which you’ve never dreamt about before.”

Descend deeper with me,

dream from the back,

dream retrospectively

in a labyrinth of mirrors

which leads nowhere.

The moment you come to the beginning of nothing

you’ll dream an exciting dream.

Frame it

and hang it in your bedroom.

So it will always be before your eyes

because a dream which is removed from the eye

is removed from the mind

in the sense

of the ancient laws

of human forgetfulness.

Dream your own.

Dream your dream

which is reflected on the surface

of a frozen lake.

A dream smooth and freezing:

Grieving keys,

a downcast forest,

curved glass.

The tributes of mirrors.

The rising of the moon

in a dream of water.

Recoil from the bottom

of the mirror’s dream.

In the gallery of dreams

then you’ll see

a live broadcast from childhood

fragments of long-forgotten stories.

Because our obsolete dreams

remain with us.

Don’t be in a hurry, dream slowly, completely

until you see the crystalline construction

of your soul

in which dreams glitter.

- intentionally and comprehensibly like flame.

Perhaps you’ve already noticed

that new dreams always decrease.

They wane.

Soon we’ll light up

in the magical dusk

of the last dream

the despairing cry

of a starry night.

Pay a toll to the dream’s

deliverance from sense.

You repeat aloud

the intimacies of secret dreams,

with the dull gleam

of your persistent night eyes

you explicate a mysterious speech of darkness.

You dream, therefore you exist!

 ______________________________

YOU CAN TELL AN ANGEL FROM HIS FEATHERS

(For my parents who are not yet - departed-)

In my innermost display cases

all my glassy memories tremble.

At the end of silence to hear last year’s rain

how it dictates whispering

its incomprehensible telegram

A pack of sad angels

howl in the light of the moon

The river falls from weariness,

the mortal spirit of water

in it falls with ease

to the bottom

I feel mercury in my veins

after the explosion of blood

- it’s in my guts

supersonic angels

rise from the dead.

Their deafening engines

start up in my head.

When they take off

the deepest silence begins

in which perhaps I’ll hear

distant pearls

how they pour on the parquets.

A morning confession of frozen tears

freezes me

in my yet more Autumn eyes.

___________________________________

SOMEONE LIKE A GOD

I,

You,

He

And someone else …

- the fourth like a dimension,

the fifth a season in the year,

the sixth like a sense,

the seventh like a continent.

The eighth like a day of the week,

The ninth like a point of an octagon,

The tenth like Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony,

The eleventh like a commandment,

The twelfth like a football player,

The thirteenth like an apostle,

The fourteenth like Friday the Thirteenth,

The fifteenth like Louis Quattorze,

The sixteenth like the fifteen,

The seventeenth like a sixteenth,

The eighteenth like the seventeenth century,

The twenty-second like an eye,

The thirty first like a thirty percent fall in bonds,

The thirty third like a tooth,

The thirty fourth like Christ’s year,

- the unending like a god

and so just sexless,

the powerless

like one who makes love,

painless and therefore senseless,

unrivalled like a god

in the world who has no other gods,

ungodly like a god

who has neither a god beside him

or over him,

bottomless like a sky,

unrestrained like the wind,

boundless like thought,

immaterial like a ghost,

nameless bearer of an unknown name,

hopelessly faultless,

aimless like a perpetual runner,

childless like the father

of a crucified son,

unreasonable like death

and so just remorseless,

nationless like a god

of all people

and beings similar to them,

sightless and faceless,

legless, handless and wingless,

hairless and toothless,

safe as a harbour

for immortal wanderers,

without charge like a promise,

unparalleled in perfection,

derived in its own home,

unmediated like touch,

helpless like a deed,

dreamless like a night,

careless like a bird,

inconsolable like truth,

ungoverned as the oldest citizen in the world,

implicit as love,

without consequence like justice,

a creature without colour,

taste

and smell.

He wanders in space as if without soul,

a creator without parents,

a being without dwelling place,

a vagabond without address,

from beyond memory without work,

from time immemorial without bread,

forever he proceeds without footprints,

always thinks without considering

and always the same,

he breeds without hesitation,

gives birth without reason,

regardless of anything or anyone,

kills without dispensation

- everything and everyone,

since the beginning of the age of ages,

he abandons us without regard

for race, religion or conviction,

he always triumphs without battle,

judges without mercy,

punishes continuously

and then weeps without sorrow

over the spilt mother’s milk

of the immaculate virgin,

who bore him a son

so he could give him

deviously and thoroughly to be crucified

at the hands of his chosen people,

so he rules the world without check,

an uncriticised despot,

he acts unceasingly without rest

and knows everything without consciousness,

he prays to himself without words,

he accepts himself without reserve,

he grants himself adoration without consideration,

he is blessedly silent about himself,

so continuously decides without witnesses,

without rhyme or reason,

with no way out,

wholly without himself,

headless,

heelless,

heartless,

with not a drop of blood,

without anything.

Redeem him

while there’s time.

Perhaps his fate

awaits us, too –

cruel

towards all creatures

who have been surpassed by their own works.

KOSOVO

(for Ján Tužinský)

A burning

paper Goethe

prays

in Serb

for four hundred dead children

In Schiller’s stone eye

gleams a tear of mercury

There’s a Gypsy weeping

for a little Romany fairy

at the bottom of the Adriatic

Blood

has an irresistible color

of the bluish dusk of the sky

from which falls

light and glitterings

like a gust of May rain

to fertilize the wounded earth.

NEW YORK

In a horizontal mirror

of the straightened bay

the points of an angular city

stabbing directly into the starry sky.

In the glittering sea of lamps

flirtatious flitting boats

tremble marvelously

on your agitated legs

swimming in the lower deck

of a brocade evening dress.

Suddenly we are missing persons

like needles in a labyrinth of tinfoil.

Some things we take personally –

stretch limousines,

moulting squirrels in central Park

and the metal body of dead freedom.

In New York most of all it’s getting dark...

The glittering darkness lights up.

The thousand-armed luster of the mega city

writes Einstein’s message about the speed of light

every evening on the gleaming surface of the water.

And again before the dusk the silver screen

of the New York sky floods

with hectolitres of Hollywood blood.

Where does the empire of glass and marble reach?

Where do the slim rackets of the skyscrapers aim?

God buys a hot dog

at the bottom of a sixty-storey street.

God is a black

and loves the grey color of concrete.

His sun was born from himself

in a paper box

from the newest sort of slave.