Tomaž Šalamun
Copper Dove
1
The crown.
The hare.
The doorman’s
livery.
Blue and violet air doesn’t bind you.
They both travel and change position.
They color
as it suits the
number three.
2
Every attached cosmic love
starts to smell of a
frightful sauce.
Climb the wall, jump down.
Your swimming hands will follow.
3
O poor boxer’s naked body,
berry’s pomegranate
body.
4
Lord, wash my garden
with a huge spoon.
Corrode
the hangar.
Translated from the Slovenian by Thomas Kane
and the author
Fedor! I stuff you
into the horse’s lungs.
There you hang and swim like a small
puddle. I’ll make your
teeth tired, with
a colorful, serene
hydrant that will pull
the trigger and
devastate the land. Flour is
hidden in the creaking
snow, not in the
impression, the impression
is shy and can
freeze over night. Will
buds on the pin
spring up higher? Will
the lover and sister
husk, as we used to
say? Your heart is the open
garish bag. Bump into
the pier with your hip.
You won’t make a hole in the hip.
Tito was standing on the coast in Koper
when they baptised the harbor.
The ship trampled land with its prow.
Everybody stopped. I was stunned
on the balcony.
Below our balcony,
Tito and Khruschtev
already drove by
and we waved. Even
then I was scared to death
they would hit a
sycamore. How do drivers
succeed in always
driving as they want,
always sticking to the
straight line
and never falling
off the road, (seldom,
seldom) minutes,
minutes, they compress
the air and push it
away, no one’s
upset in their seats,
while, my little friends,
Raymond Roussel’s
last move, the cardinal one
in
the belt of the
earth (not completely
covered in
concrete) into which the ship
crushed. Tito’s glove
didn’t even wink,
and I doubt he
ordered anyone shot.
His cold gray eyes could cover the shore
in concrete over
night. Italians back then
were on the level.
The press didn’t say
who made a hole in
the earth. I too.
If a whale ran into me and exploded
(or into the
near shore) I would pretend I didn’t
see anything. I
would forbid everyone to cry.
Translated
from the Slovenian by Joshua Beckman and the author
Kestrel, Buzzard, Hawk, Falcon, Buzzard
Watch out, not to go blind.
The hawk splashes upon you.
Jaguars flay the small parochial church.
The stairs are black.
Iodine grows with no milfoil.
My wings are two and a half meters wide.
I’m sexual.
They cut my flesh aggressively.
From
and from
I lean on my elbows on warm stones.
The blood has not washed off yet.
It rains infrequently.
Translated from the Slovenian by Thomas
Kane and the author
Leonardo’s Horse
Do you sink in eiderdowns, sheets, night
bonbons?
What about the
playful near shutters? To take down his skirt. The ancient
dream was carried out.
And to flip around the fish
on marks of
reconciliation. The thorns’ crown of golden
wires. Who doesn’t
perforate the surface, the cricket
or the loam? The
praying mantis drowns like a heavy rat.
Only the proboscis shines. And the water
beetle. He doesn’t
perforate the surface. In
the dusk, not seeing, he
still believes in
elasticity. To collect water in a pout?
Is it possible? To draw the mountain, all
punctured,
to show how the
cake fries in it? To make a big bathtub
out of tufa? To plaster with silt the syringe of teledynamic
powers? All this is
possible. We can take away a heart.
Horses – seven hundred thirteen – can be
lifted above
the planks, from the
air they can lower a milk pail and
peanuts – soft and hard
figs – to wait, to brighten the rain,
the place, with
different rebounds and names.
Translated
from the Slovenian by Thomas Kane and the author
Sven absorbed
in thought,
sleepy after
the second thing,
drawn off
into der Platz,
what does he
do?
He wakes in
the chlorophyll in the tree.
Sven absorbed
in thought,
sleepy after
the second thing,
drawn off
into der Platz,
what does he
do?
He wakes in
the chlorophyll in the tree.
Translated from the Slovenian by Joshua Beckman and the
author