Pesmi v angleščini
SPAIN 1999
It grew dark in the matador's brain, and the sea
swallowed up five corks together with the bottles
in which mysterious S.O.S. messages were written
on the ox-tongue. And at night one could hear sighs
of Mr. Bull's self from the castle stable. Yesterday
he managed to obtain victory by begging, tomorrow
he will be the only foreigner in Jerusalem, when he is
handled by butchers. We will never find out on whose
plate will his balls dance the fandango, what kind of
bolero is going on between his thighs, and who will
play pavan at his funeral. The still sleeping matador
has never confided it to his mistress, let alone to the
bull. The bull is therefore depressed and gloomily pale.
But all of a sudden his mother's advice crosses his mind:
"Take a lock of a red-haired woman's hair, three pubic
hairs of a fifteen year old virgin, the underwear of a
Ukrainian whore, put them all in a pot of water, pepper
it, bring it to the boil and stir it well. You will get an
elixir of eternal youth which will lead you to new
temptations. Then slap the matador's hat on your horns
and bang your head aganist the wall, so that in your
dizziness a deep thought becomes clear. And you will
realize how eternal we cattle can be, although we are
not a sacred Hindu thing, a picador‘s madness or elder
blossoms in a corrida. You will hear how we coincide
with the absolute, although at the very end they cut out
our Spanish hearts.
THE IDEAL WOMAN
To search for an answer is like sinking your head in a swamp.
The pearls went astray long since, and those who are searching
sink into the mud. They are buried to their necks and the one who
condemns them, wrongly fails to treat them with kindness in return.
Just as she, who has to be established, does not give them the answer.
So let her be commanded and happy in her nakedness, let her be
sought in the zenith and let the Bible water her with light. Let the
blood gush from her body every three hours every second Sunday,
and let her learn to recognize the identity of a man, race, national
history; let her become aware of the Absolute and of the hidden
God. Let the element of the future slowly strip her. She should be
educated cautiously, she should not believe in the adages of wise
men, but she should believe them more than she is capable of
believing. So let her be a bitter, quiet flower sprouting from the
poet's jaws, let her be a crooked spindle that grinds his living days
and takes him for a walk to the grave on a golden rein.
ILLUMINATION
Look at yourself in the mirror, o, my self, how mean you are
and loathsome and how mercilessly you defile the world, so
that shavings of corruption fall from you. You have mortgaged
eternity to realize the freedom lying on this side. Are you aware
that you want to govern every country that your dreams can reach?
I am disgusted with you when you stir hormones of teenagers in a
big pot, when you bring them to the boil, serve them on a plate, wait
until they cool off, then eat them up without a twinge of conscience
and chew them thoroughly. You could tickle yourself under the chin
as the Romans used to do, and repeat the exercise, but your alter ego
says you have to change and start all anew. I don't know if you
deserve to put on a monk's frock or shave yourself a Capuchin‘s
patch; your writing hand, however, comes from divine grace and is
different from the other parts of your body. The spirit of dialectics
changes it into the tiny hand of a child to once become hairy again.
THE HERMIT AND THE WOLF
A hermit drew a line in the sand and said:
"You may not cross this line." Then he drew a circle
saying: "You must stay in this circle. You can
cross it but not over the line". Then the tempest came
and the line disappeared. A wolf was standing in the circle.
Cold and rain had exhausted him but he
did not move. He did not know whether the line
still exists when it is no longer drawn in the sand.
I AM INSIDE YOU
I am inside you. I explore places where
no foot has trodden before. A hairy foot. Where no
human foot has trod. An ugly
foot. I think of the snail's sea and I
hang with one hand from a large oak branch
that smells of resin; I close myself in the hollow of a tree,
I hide in the wooden corridors, I am small,
small. Moomintroll. I am afraid to see
how wooden clouds vault, how their shavings
fly in the air, I imagine that I am
a droning plane diving towards an attacked
city, or that I am Dr Buffalo, picking
dandelion clocks, opening them with my nails and squeezing
white milk from their stalks, or that I am a long long
strand of saliva that is on fire on the coast of the snail's sea
and is elongated through transparent spindles
far towards the horizon. Then I touch the small blue
lime house and I say that it is very good,
and that I would like to have one of those in my room, so I could
put it on the dwarf's clock and turn off the light.
And perhaps fall asleep in your head.
Good night.
Translated by Vesna Zevnik