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Song of Our Lady of the Water Closet
I'm so happy
I'm eighty years old
God has forgotten about me
I just have to make sure there's toilet paper there
in its right and proper place
I'm so happy
I'm eighty years old
God has forgotten about me
I just have to make sure there's toilet paper there
in its right and proper place
7.8.86
Two Casual Laborers, Having Put Down their Forks, Stretch Out on the Hay,
Turn their Unshaven Faces to the Sun, and are Talking Away Lazily
"During summer time I made myself
like, a geezerber, y'know, taking black plastic bags
then sorta four tires at the corners, so I never got rained on.
It was cozy, specially when I brought in some hay an' I'd lie
there for days on end. They gave me social security, so I could live on it.
So can't you get yourself security or somethin', if you've got, like,
kidsofreania?"
"They can go an' screw
their bloody social security. Like right now
I'm standing on me own two feet. An' when I can't work any more,
I'll just walk into the middle of some field, find a deep pit an' just die,
right."
"Look mate, this is your Western world, this is,
they're not gonna let you die here. They'll pull you outa the hole
an' put yer into some home for gerryatrix."
"But I'm only twenty-four."
"You'll be'round a while yet. Like, if you've got kidsofreania,
an' you ain't got no place, they'll get yer one or another."
"I'm gonna build me one a' them geezerbers too.
Used to hang round the railway station, but the fuzz don't half
bugger things up. With no place to go, well shit, that's no fuckin' life."
13.4.88
* * *
To see a teacher
in each one of these three candles
in the toy pistol lying beside me
in these 'Yugo' cigarettes, in a cup of coffee, in Mukunda's checkered
blanket,
in the lunatic teachers of childhood.
To write a poem. To keep watch.
To be next to you with the presence that does not recognize miles.
To remember the wise teachers too. To be shocked
that wars are still going on, that it's Heidegger who exists and not
nothing,
that Truth plays hide and seek with poetry.
To be the master of surprise. To attribute every belief you have
to exhaustion.
To travel in time with that small space,
to rock on top of the camel that is your biro.
To love you with words.
That is all that I can manage tonight.
And to blow out those three candles, one by one,
and then, myself, the fourth.
9.1.87
Instead of Complaining, Here's a Better Offer No Cowboy's Girl Can Refuse
Just remember you've got to have a sideboard. Your world may just fall apart
but there'll still be the sideboard. 'All you need is' a sideboard
& lots & lots of pots & pans, which are easier to fill up than
a vacuum is. Don't you worry now, we've put Jesus, Gandhi, King, Lennon
out
of their misery, like all the other trash, so our towns are cleaned up
now,
the flower children have wilted, the diamonds belonging to Lucy as she ran
across the sky
have turned out to be junk, & Greenwich Village is squarer than the
Tretiakov Gallery
& no more smelly hippies eager to pick up hitchhikers in the spirit of
apathetic Love .
Throw their filthy books out onto our elegant skip
Ken Kesey the lunatic, Tim Leary the drug addict & Kerouac the thief,
guys like that are only still fashionable in Eastern Europe & the
Philippines.
Yeah, just buy yourself a sideboard & lots of crockery, a silver service
& video cutlery,
all kinds of drinks, four limousines,
seven hundred pairs of underwear & a bobsleigh track
you've got to achieve something in life.
Make money, not love.
Your cowboy drives a Toyota, he's really cool, trust him,
he'll drive you through life so carefully,
that you can avoid opening your eyes at all.
All you need is a sideboard.
Don't open your eyes, at any moment something could fall apart,
better not to look. It'd be easy to lose faith
in the meaning of life, & life has to have meaning:
for example looking after a sideboard.
Be on your guard, some Czech or Hungarian writing poems for you
is already attempting to carve his heart filled with crap into the polished
veneer.
17.5.88
Don't Leave Me
Don't stop loving me. Not even for a second. Think of me
morning & evening, & when praying. Even at the cost of missing a meal
even if it means you lose more weight. Feel free, watch
'Dempsey & Makepeace', look at the displays of dresses in the shop
windows,
the symptoms of any disease
on your body - but just hold me in front of your eyes.
Shifting fifty kilo bags of cement I carry you in my arms.
Skipping to a reggae tune I jump after you into the fire.
Biting my nails I bite them out of longing for you.
Listening to the weather forecast I strain to hear your voice.
Sometimes I'm gasping for air
& then I know you've forgotten about me for a moment.
2.2.89
For a Woman Painter
Night has softened & the landscape twitters wildly via the dark birdlife,
I'm writing this poem for you on an empty stomach, the unnecessary sun has risen
& above the line of the horizon it has placed its 'pinxit' crookedly.
The stub of your body at dawn makes its mark in italics
I still have the taste of make-up in my mouth, my obsessive brain is going to
some effort
to work out how to connect the end of the world with the end of this poem, since
everywhere there's laughter.
But we'll survive this day too, perhaps one day we'll even have a good
time on this world, which is expiring beneath our feet .
14-15 May 1989
Even the Mirrors Will Be On Our Side
we've got to get out of here it's no fun here any more we've got to
break the ring of encirclement & take the world
by surprise from behind like a woman we've got to
take it alive with its plants & birds
with its Wimbledon lawn courts mown to medium height
with its lakes scattered around the Mazurian
countryside like silver ducats with its wild Siberian landscape
& the beaches of Port of Spain filled with the queues of
calypso dancers we've got to spend lots of time in the sun
on Jupiter's moon & then on Mars to land on the earth
with a radical sect of Venusian sluts to shout Free
Nelson Mandela & pour a soupcon of johimbina powder into the
priests' communion wine - which would make a horse stand
on its hind legs - & then plunder the churches in the name of the Holy
Requisition & then burn marihuana mixed with washing powder
on piles of banknotes it's got to be a laugh, such a laugh
that Boris Vian turns in his grave onto his left side
& begins to write about us in that uncomfortable
position much as the lives of the saints or some or other daft stories dreamt
up
at his decomposing fingertips how we clambered onto the colossi on their clay
legs
& set off at camel's trot from La Mancha to fight helicopters
how we sailed across the hills from Pachitea in Ucayala
how they wanted to arrest us near Stalingrad because of our dress sense
& for tradition's sake & how led by Hasek we escaped
so splendidly, as splendidly as you can only escape from a battlefield
& just like Patten got some unchewable gum just as a warm-up
because as usual he was trailing at the end playing the underdog
& how in front of the conscription panel it turned out that everyone
of us had lacquered toenails & like at the barber's
the mirrors were on our side when they wanted to
deprive us of our long hair & how the Statue of Liberty moaned with delight
when gang-banged by us one after the other & then at random
all this goes on this is the life we were created to live
only we have to get out of here I can already hear the paranoid voice of
the paragod paraphrasing our poems throw away the pens hands on your head &
out
6.6.89
Song of My Own Warsaw
Night lays a black plaster on the city's open wound,
the lilac & jasmine in the parks is as fragrant as if a perfume bottle got
knocked over,
a student glues & then rolls out the silent frozen
pastry features of some scapegoat stuck in the poster
of some new political line, a senatorial candidate
being praised for his soft-heartedness & impulsiveness.
Rain thoughtlessly washes the faces of other candidates off the fence,
though tearing them down before the campaign has ended is a fineable offense.
The tram is heading back to the depot for the night, its driver swearing at me
because deep in thought until the last moment
I'd been standing on the edge of the pavement. I just stuck up my arm at the
elbow
though on evenings like this it's pretty easy to get things wrong:
a step in the wrong direction, the tram's warning bell rings,
some pedestrian screams, & it's all over.
All there would be left afterwards is the sense of loss. The
person & the suit will be sorely missed.
I quickly bend down to pick up my own shadow lying on the pavement,
tie it to my ankles, & run diagonally across the roundabout,
repeating an address to myself: Nurska Street Seven Seven.
No thoughts squeeze through the tight gaps between those four words.
I've got to restrain the instinctive reflex, as my mind wraps my heart in a
heavy rug
& sends it to sleep like a baby, just when it wants to go crazy.
Some exhibitionist in a shadowy doorway boasting a shiny pale face
waves something impressive at me while as a policeman steals an illegal
snooze in the guard's box positioned in front of the Afghan embassy -
if the queer only knew, he could have penetrated an unguarded building.
I run skipping through the puddles. I jump from one extreme to another.
First it's the metaphysics of excess, & then I've got a deficit in the body
stakes.
I know that she'll treat me with her measured tenderness.
She's not even that concerned about the time I get there. She's been ironing.
Blouses, panties, trousers & dresses are piled high on a chair.
There's a new picture decorating the wall, a magic ring with an eye
colored peach blossom. On a light blue background. Kind of beautiful
but you can tell it's concealing something from the human eye.
When you can see things as if in the palm of your hand, that's when
a new, higher mystery is created. One that's half-joyous, half-vicious.
When my girl scratches me lightly behind the ear & repeats
that it's time to forget about that other world, I feel down
& miss something, though I'm supposed to feel free now
& involved in the here & now. Anyway, if I can just say this
on what's a rather vast subject, people always turn up everywhere late,
because they can change their beliefs more easily than themselves .
They always know more than they understand. Then suddenly at the least
convenient opportunity what rears its ugly head is their once-dead dreams.
They want to stay children, color in the book with God in it with colored
crayons
but God turned up incognito & the miracle went & happened some time ago.
5-6 June 1989
Overweight
They say less & less & use more & more perfume.
They need only a quarter of an hour for a night of love.
Their feelings are putting on weight.
They have handed their children into the care of the Muppets & the Smurfs.
Above their beds the passionate words: "I will never leave
you" hang in touched-up lettering.
They display their feelings embarrassedly like luggage in
front of a customs official, as if they were
carrying out some harsh penance.
Every evening they escape from their home, her into a
fashion catalogue, him into some thriller.
In the mornings they hurry to the factories producing (first and foremost)
sadness.
They have a three-year old car, & two illicit affairs each on
their consciences. It wasn't going to work, was it?
3.5.89
Grass Accepts
The grass accepts the cigarette ends & brown crawly things
thrown out of the tent.
The earth, the largest orphanage in the universe, patiently tolerates
our childish whims & antics.
Our tears & shooting at each other,
pouring salt into the fruit salad & placing bombs underneath things.
A strong wind blowing, the tent clutches the earth as tightly as a child
hangs onto its Mother's hand. I am writing in a horizontal position, the
strength
necessary to understanding this world is rising up through my stomach.
The blades of grass straining upwards point me in the right direction.
Love,
Love gives us a chance to win through despite our own being.
Translated by Donald Pirie
* * *
Day like a monkey shinnying up the trunk for its daily fruit
again ascended over the country we have outside our window
in a Fauvist "landschaft." Bitter yellow, green as sour
as pickled cucumbers, here and there sprinkled dried coconut: snow.
Lidka is back from shopping, when she stands next to me, I turn and kiss
her swelling belly, she knew this would happen, under her sweater
stuck into the back of her pants, she has chocolate with mango and guava:
laughter.
I eat the whole bar and now I have to go to the bathroom; under the tub skurries
this bug
that lives off particles of peeled skin and sugar; I make a rapid wrong
decision: death.
Vanitas; Et Omnia Vanitatis
With my foot dictating the rhythm on the aluminum runner
of David's cradle, I reach over his head for a ballpoint
to write down death. First there was Murka
under the wheel of a car. Then Mini vanished mysteriously,
as if she'd been kidnapped by the Palestinian counterintelligence. Kosma
died
a few days ago, emaciated with diarrhea, the drip and the kisses didn't
work,
he miaowed for relief to the very end. Now comes a message saying
that Marylou was killed in a motorcycle crash, chasing the wind. Not long
ago
I found her delayed hair in the bathroom. Now the same hair is wasting
away
somewhere on French soil. Young flesh perishes. My three-month-old son
makes clever faces and sends off a sly, victorious grin.
He's knows something. He may be one of the Palestinian scouts.
Intellect
Autumn, the cold, the wind violently
tears smoke out of the chimney,
the radiators heat up quickly.
The store of coal in the cellar dwindles.
The washer automatically chews David's diapers.
It stops, starts again, selects from among its programs
without the slightest hesitation, like someone with a pure intellect.
Translated by Elzbieta Wójcik-Leese and W. Martin
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