Ay Penguin Modern European Poets Vasko Popa Selected Poemsi | 1 4 1 i al 1 Penguin Modern European Poets D114 Advisory Editor: A, Alvarez Vasko Popa - Selected Poems Vasko Popa was born in 1922 in Grebenac, Banat (Yugoslavia). He studied at the universities of Vienna, Bucharest and Belgrade, taking his degree in French and Yugoslav literature in Belgrade in 1949. He now works as editor at the Nolit publishing house in Belgrade. Four collections of his poems have been. published: Kora (Bark), Nepotin~Polje (Unrest- Field), Pesme (Poems) and Sporedno Nebo (Secondary Heaven). He has received a number of literary awards, including the Branko Raditevi¢ prize (1953), the Zmaj prize (1956), and the Lenau prize (1967). His poems have been translated into French, German, Rumanian, Czech, Slovak, Polish and Hungarian, and some have been set to music by Dusan Radié and Milko Kelemen.Vasko Popa Selected Poems | Translated by With an Introduction by | Anne Pennington Ted Hughes i |Penguin Books Ltd, Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England Penguin Books Australia Ltd, Ringwood, Victoria, Australia First published 1969 Copyright © Vasko Popa, 1952, 1956, 1965, 1968 Translation copyright €) Anne Pennington, 1969 Introduction copyright © Ted Hughes, 1967 Made and printed in Great Britain by Hunt Bamard & Co. Ltd, Aylesbury Set in Monotype Bembo The poems in this selection are taken from the following books, to whose publishers acknowledge- ment is made: Kora (1952), Nepocin-Polje (1956), Pesme (1965), Sporedno Nebo (1968) by Vasko Popa. Anne Pennington would like to thank the author and Olga Stefanovic for their invaluable assistance in these translations, This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaserContents Acknowledgements 4 Introduction by Ted Hughes 9 | from BARK (1952) List (1951) j Duck 18 i, Horse 19 ! Donkey 20 Pig 21 Dandelion 22 Far within us (1943-51) 23-26 from EARTH ERECT (1965) Pilgrimage (1950-1965) Sopoéani 28 Manasija 29 Kaleni¢ 30 i Radimlja 31 4 Belgrade 32 UNREST-FIELD (1956) Games : Before play 34 The nail 35 . Hide-and-seek 36 The seducer 37The wedding 38 The rose thieves 39 Between games 40 He 41 The seed 42 Leapfrog 43 The hunter 44 Ashes 45 After play 46 One bone to another At the beginning 47 After the beginning 48 Inthe sun 49 S Underground 50 ‘ Inthe moonlight 51 Before the end 52 Attheend 53 Give me back my rags 54-67 mo The quartz pebble The quartz pebble 68 The heart of the quartz pebble 69 The dream of the quartz pebble 70 The love of the quartz pebble 71 The adventure of the quartz pebble 72 The secret of the quartz pebble 73 Two quartz pebbles 74 6xv from SECONDARY HEAVEN (1968) The yawn of yawns The stargazer’s legacy 76 A forgetful number 77 A conceited mistake 78 A wise triangle 79 Petrified echoes 80 The story ofa story 81 The yawn of yawns 82 Signs Anintruder 83 A winged pipe 84 An obstinate bundle 85 A homeless head 86 A condemned dagger 87 Burning hands 88 The last cord 89 Dissension Actowned apple 90 A blue noose 91 Ahigh path 92 Hardworking threads 93 Foster brood 94 Fertile fire 95 Free flight 96 Imitation of the sun Death of the sun father 97 Blind sun 98 Clash at the zenith 99 7Preparations for a welcome 100 Midnight sun 101 Foreign sun 102 Imitation of the sun 103 Schism Gluttonous smoke 104 Acake of ashes 105 An extinguished wheel 106 A fireproof spool 107 A clot of darkness 108 The fiery sunflower 109 An incandescent kiss 110 The lime in the midst of the heart The song of young truth 111 A dragon in the womb 112 The taming of the dagger 113 A fish in the soul 114 The suffering of the golden tripod 115 A dove in the head 116 The lime in the midst of the heart 117 Heaven’ s ring The stargazer’s death 118 Heaven’s ring 119 Nothingness 120 Orphan absence 121 The shadow maker 122 Thé starry snail 123 Fugitive stars 124Introduction to the poetry of Vasko Popa |. Vasko Popa is a Yugoslav and was born in 1922. He studied Jiterature at the University of Belgrade and now works in a publishing house. His published books of verse are Kora . (1952), Nepotin-Polje (1956), Pesme (1965) and Sporedno 4. Nebo (1968). He is one of a generation of East European poets - Holub 4. of Czechoslovakia and Herbert of Poland are perhaps two -others of similar calibre - who were caught in mid-adoles- gence by the war. Their reaction to the mainly surrealist “) principles that prevailed in Continental poetry in the inter- ‘war years was a matter of personal temperament, but it has, been reinforced by everything that has since happened, to their countries in particular and in some measure (more than ever before) to human beings everywhere. Circum- stantial proof that man isa political animal, a state numeral, as if it needed to be proved, has been weighed out in dead bodies by the million. The attempt these poets are making to put on record that man is also, at the same time and in the same circumstances, an acutely conscious human creature of suffering and hope, has brought their poetry down to such precisions, discriminations and humilities that it is a new thing. It seems closer to the common reality, in which we have to live if we are to survive, than to those other realities | in which we can holiday, or into which we decay when our bodily survival is comfortably taken care of, and which art, particularly contemporary art, is forever trying to imposeon us as some sort of superior dimension. think it was Mitosz, the Polish poet, who when he lay in a doorway and watched ¢ bullets lifting the cobbles out of the street beside him ‘realized that most poetry is not equipped for life in a worldwhere people actually do die. But some is. And the poets of . whom Popa is one seem to have put their poetry to a similar - test. We can guess at the forces which shaped their outlook / and style. They have had to live out, in actuality, a vision © which for artists elsewhere isa prevailing shape of things but“? only brokenly glimpsed, through the clutter of our civilized | liberal confusion. They must be reckoned among the purest | and most wide awake of living poets. ' In a way, their world reminds one of Beckett's world, | Only theirs seems braver, more human, and so more real. It.| is as horrible as his but they do not despair of it to the point | of surrendering consciousness and responsibility to their animal cells. Their poetic themes revolve around the living © suffering spirit, capable of happiness, much deluded, too frail, with doubtful and provisional senses, so undefinable as - to be almost silly, but palpably existing, and wanting to go on existing ~ and this is not, as in Beckett’s world, absurd. - It is the only precious thing, and designed in accord with the _ whole universe. Designed, indeed, by the whole universe. | They are not the spoiled brats of civilization disappointed of | impossible and unreal expectations and deprived of the revelations of necessity. In this they are prophets speaking somewhat against their times, though in an undertone, and not looking for listeners. They have managed to grow upto | a view of the unaccommodated universe, but it has not: - made them cynical, they still like it and keep all their sympathies intact. They have got back to the simple animal courage of accepting the odds. In another way, their world reminds one of the world of |, modern physics. Only theirs is more useful to us, in that while it is the same gulf of unknowable laws and unknow- able particles, the centre of gravity is not within some postu- late deep in space, or leaking away down the drill-shaft of Iomathematics, but inside man’s sense of himself, inside his “body and his essential human subjectivity, his refusal to surrender his individuality to any impersonal abstraction, © political or fashionable or whatever. They refuse to sell out their arms, legs, hair, ears, body and soul and all it has suffered with them, in order to escape with some fragmentary sense, some abstract badge of self-estrangement, into a | popular membership safety. They accept in a sense what the prisoner must accept, who cannot pretend that any finger is at large. Like men come back from the dead they have an , ‘improved perception, an unerring sense of what really counts in being alive. This helplessness in the circumstances has purged them of rhetoric. They cannot falsify their experience by any hopeful effort to change it. Their poetry is a strategy of making audible meanings without disturbing the silence, an art of homing in tentatively on vital scarcely perceptible signals, making no mistakes, but with no hope of finality, continuing to explore. Finally, with delicate manoeuvring, they pre- Cipitate out of a world of malicious negatives a happy positive. And they have created a small ironic space, a work of lyrical art, in which their humanity can respect itself. Vasko Popa uses his own distinctive means. Like the others, he gives the impression of being well-acquainted with all that civilization has amassed in the way of hypo- ° theses. Again, like the others, he seems to have played the film of history over to himself many times. Yet he has been thoroughly stripped of any spiritual or mental proprietor- » ship. No poetry could carry less luggage than his, or be freer of predisposition and preconception. No poetry is more difficult to outflank, yet it is in no sense defen- sive. His poems are trying to find out what does exist, and what the conditions really are. The movement of his verse part of his method of investigating something fearfully _. L| apprehended, fearfully discovered. But he will not be fright- ened into awe. He never loses his deeply ingrained humour | and irony : that is his way of hanging on to his human whole- ness. And he never loses his intense absorption in what he | is talking about, either. His words test their way forward, sensitive to their own errors, dramatically and intimately‘ alive, like the antennae of some rock-shore creature feeling © out the presence of the sea and the huge powers in it. This : analogy is not so random. There is a primitive pre-creation | atmosphere about his work, as if he were present where all the dynamisms and formulae were ready and charged, but i nothing created — or only a few fragments. Human beings, | as visibly and wholly such, do not appear in Popa’s land- scapes. Only heads, tongues, spirits, hands, flames, magically vitalized wandering objects, such as apples and moons, present themselves, animated with strange but strangely - familiar destinies. His poetry is near the world of music, where a repository of selected signs and forms, admitted from the outer world, act out fundamental combinations . that often have something eerily mathematical about their : progressions and symmetries, but which seem to belong deeply to the world of spirit or of the heart. Again like music, his poems turn the most grisly confrontations into some- thing deadpan playful: a spell, a riddle, a game, astory. He arrived at this freedom and inevitability gradually. His earliest manner often owes a lot to a familiar kind of mildly surrealist modern poesy, though it is charming in ' Popa, and already purposeful, as in the poem titled ‘In ; forgetting’, which is from a series of landscapes: | From the distant darkness The plain stuck out its tongue The uncontrollable plain ' | 12pilt events Spent faded words F’ Levelled faces Here and there A hand of smoke i Sighs without oars Thoughts without wings Homeless glances Here and there ‘A flower of mist Unsaddled shadows More and more quietly paw The hot ash of laughter ‘That is from his first book, Kora, but ‘Acquaintance’ the 3 first poem in the same book, already sketches out the essential eh } method and universe of his much later and more character~ istic work: Don’t try to seduce me blue vault I'm not playing You are the vault of the thirsty palate Over my head 7 Ribbon of space i Don’t wind round my legs Don’t try to entrance me You are a wakeful tongueMy ingenuous breathing My breathless breathing Don’t try to intoxicate me I sense the breath of the beast Pm not playing Thear the familiar clash of dogs The clash of teeth on teeth I feel the dark of the jaws That opens my eyes Isee \ | Isce I'm not dreaming It is all there, the surprising fusion of unlikely elements. The sophisticated philosopher is also a primitive, gnomic | spellmaker. The desolate view of the universe opens through eyes of childlike simplicity and moody oddness. The wide perspective of general elemental and biological lawis spelled | out with folklore hieroglyphs and magical monsters. The | whole style is a marvelously effective artistic invention. It enables Popa to be as abstract as man can be, yet remain as i intelligible and entertaining and as fully human as ifhe were | telling a comic story. It is in this favourite device of his, the | little fable of visionary anecdote, that we see most clearly his . shift from literary surrealism to the far older and deeper - thing, the surrealism of folklore. The distinction between the two seems to lie in the fact that literary surrealism is | always connected with an extreme remove from the busi-. | ness of living under practical difficulties and successfully managing them. The mind, having abandoned the struggle with circumstances and consequently lost the unifying focus that comes of that, has lost morale and surrendered to 4 ' |tothe arbitrary i imagery of the dream flow. Folktale surrealism, “on the other hand, is always urgently connected with the business of trying to manage practical difficulties so great that they have forced the sufferer temporarily out of the | dimension of coherent reality into that depth of imagination where understanding has its roots and stores its X-rays. There isno sense of surrender to the dream flow for its own sake or of relaxation from the outer battle. In the world of metamorphoses and flights the problems are dismantled and solved, and the solution is always a practical one. This type of surrealism, if it can be called surrealism at all, goes naturally with a down-to-earth, alert tone of free inquiry, and in Popa’s poetry the two appear everywhere together. The air of trial and error exploration, of an improvised language, the attempt to get near something for which he is almost having to invent the words in a total disregard for poetry or the normal conventions of discourse, goes with his habit of working in cycles of poems. He will trust no phrase with his meaning for more than six or seven words at a time before he corrects his tack with another phrase from a different direction. In the same way, he will trust no poem with his meaning for more than fifteen or so lines, before he tries again from a totally different direction with another poem. Each cycle creates the terms of a universe, which he | then explores, more or less methodically, with the terms. ‘And one of the attractions of all Popa’s poems is that one cannot set any limit to how deeply into the substance of the 4 universe his intuitions may penetrate. The cycle called Games, for instance, is close to mankind as we know it. . Nothing prevents these poems from being merely ingenious, : or virtuoso pieces of phrasing and timing, except the shock ‘of recognition they impart, and the universe of grim evil which they evoke. It could as well be protozoa, or mathe- tical possibilities, playing these games, as anything in- humanity. They are deeper than our reality as puppets are | deeper than our reality: the more human they look and act: ’ the more elemental they seem. 5 In his latest collection, Secondary Heaven (1968), the total vision is vast and one understands why he has been called an ., epic poet. His cosmos is more mysteriously active and dread- ‘ ful but his affection for our life is closer than ever. The infinite » terrible circumstances that seem to destroy man’s import- ance, appear as the very terms of his importance. Man is the | face, arms, legs etc. grown over the infinite, terrible All. Popa’s poems work in the sanity and fundamental simplicity ‘| ) of this fact, as it might appear to a man sitting inachair. | i Tsp Hucaes: | | | from BARK (1952) i iList Duck She waddles through the dust In which no fish are smiling Within her sides she carries : The restlessness of water I , | Clumsy She waddles slowly The reeds she’s thinking of She'll reach them anyway Never i Never will she be able ' To walk | . As she was able To plough the mirrors 18| Horse Usually He has eight legs _ Between his jaws » Man came to live | From his four corners of earth | Then he bit his lips to blood He wanted | To chew through that maize stalk _ Tt was all long ago - Inhis lovely eyes _ Sorrow has closed Into a circle _ For the road has no ending And he must drag behind him + The whole world 19Donkey Sometimes he brays Rolls in the dust Sometimes , Then you notice him Otherwise You see only his ears On the head of the planet But he’s not there "20' Only when she felt | The savage knife in her throat Did the red veil _ Explain the game \ And she was sorry She had torn herself From the mud’s embrace _ And had burried that evening _ From the field so joyfully - Hurried to the yellow gateDandelion On the edge of the pavement At the end of the world The yellow eye of loneliness Blind steps Beat down his neck Into the stone belly Underground elbows Drive his roots Into the black earth of the sky A dog’s lifted leg Mocks him With an overheated shower His joy is only A stroller’s homeless glance Which spends the night In his corolla And so The stub burns out On the lower lip of impotence At the end of the world| I 1 Far within us I _ We lift our hands | The street climbs up into the sky ' We drop our eyes The roofs descend into the earth _ Out of each pain ' Which we do not mention A chestnut tree grows up And remains mysterious behind us Out of each hope Which we cherish _ Astar arises _ And moves unattainable in front of us Do you hear the shot Which flies around our head Do you hear the shot i Which guards our kiss2 The streets of your glances Have no ending The swallows from your eyes Do not migrate south From the aspens in your breasts The leaves do not fall In the heaven of your words The sun does not set | i t \ I '3 Our day is a green apple Cut in two Tlook at you You do not see me Between us is the blind sun On the steps Our torn embrace You call me a Ido not hear you | Between us is the deaf air In shop windows My lips are seeking » Your smile At the crossroads »} Our trampled kiss ; have given you my hand '» You do not feel it Emptiness has embraced you | Inthe squares Your tear is seeking My eyes In the evening my day dead Meets with your dead day Only in sleep - We walk the same paths4 These are your lips That I return To your neck This is my moonlight That I take down From your shoulders We have lost each other | In the impenetrable woods Of our meeting In my hands Your adam’s apples Set and dawn In your throat Flame up and fade My impetuous stars We have found each other On the golden plateau Far within us \ | { ' i | | 26fron EARTH ERECT (1965)Pilgrimage Sopoéani* Rosy calm of strength Mature calm of greatness From the golden birds below earth To the profusion of fruit in the heavens Allis within reach The forms have knelt marvellously In the eye of the artist (Time has gnawed at it) Young beauty of pride Sleepwalker’s certainty The gates of eternal spring And the bright weapons of happiness All wait only for a sign In the artist’s right hand Beat the pulses of the world (Time has gnawed at it / And broken its teeth) / *Sopodani (about 1260-70), Manasija (1406-18) and Kaleni¢ (1407-13) are three of the Serbian monasteries famous for their frescoes, 28Manasija Blue and gold ~ Last ring of the horizon Last apple of the sun Oh Zograf How far does your sight reach _ Do you hear the night horsemen | Allah il ilallah - Your brush does not tremble Your colours are not afraid ' The night horsemen come closer © Allah il ilallah Oh Zograf + What do you see in the night’s depth Gold and blue | Last star in the soul | Last infinity in the eyeKalenié ‘Whence my eyes In your face Angel my brother The colours dawn On the edge of forgetting Other shades forbid me To return the lightning Of your sword to its sheath The colours ripen On the weightless branch of time Hence your lovely stubbornness At the corners of my lips Angel my brother The colours burn With youth in my blood 30Radimlja* Amid the pathlessness An upraised hand Flamed with its palm Flashed with its fingers Long ago it freed The old native sun Tied to the tails Of foreign stallions _ Today it illuminates The cavern of mystery Hollowed out by questions In my brow of stone ’ An upraised hand Wordless met me Amid the pathlessness And showed me the way *In Bosnia -Hercegovina there ate a large number of tombs (com- monly held to be Bogomil) with geometric and representational ". carvings. One at Radimlja shows a man’s figure, holding up a dis~ proportionately large hand with outstretched fingers. This has been interpreted as a symbol of the sun.Belgrade White bone among the clouds You arise out of your pyre Out of your ploughed-up barrows Out of your scattered ashes You arise out of your disappearance The sun keeps you In its golden reliquary High above the yapping of the centuries And carries you to the marriage Of the fourth river of Paradise With the thirty-sixth river of Earth White bone among the clouds Bone of our bones 32UNREST-FIELD (1956) For HasHa Shall I be able on this unrest-field to set up for you a tent of my own hands? FAR WITHIN US (1943)Games Before play To Zoran Mixi¢ One shuts one eye : Peers into oneself into every corner Looks at oneself to see there are no spikes no thieves No cuckoos’ eggs \ One shuts the other eye too Crouches then jumps Jumps high high high To the top of oneself Thence one drops by one’s own weight For days one drops deep deep deep To the bottom of one’s abyss He who is not smashed to smithereens He who remains whole and gets up whole He plays 34| | ‘ The nail One be the nail another the pincers The others are workmen The pincers take the nail by the head With their teeth with.their hands they grip him And tug him tug To get him out of the ceiling Usually they only pull his head off It’s difficult to get a nail out of the ceiling Then the workmen say The pincers are no good They smash their jaws they break their arms And throw them out of the window After that someone else be the pincers Someone else the nail The others are workmen 35Hide-and-seek Someone hides from someone Hides under his tongue He looks for him under the earth He hides on his forehead He looks for him in the sky He hides in his forgetting He looks for him in the grass Looks for him looks Where doesn’t he look for him And looking for him loses himself 36The seducer One caresses the leg of a chair Until the chair turns And gives him a welcome sign with its leg Another kisses a keyhole Kisses it doesn’t he just kiss it Until the keyhole returns his kiss A third stands by Gapes at the other two And twists his head twists it Until his head falls offThe wedding Each takes off his skin Each uncovers his constellation i Which has never seen the night Each fills his skin with stones Each starts dancing with it By the light of his own stars He who goes on till dawn } * He who doesn’t blink doesn’t drop He earns his skin (This game is rarely played)The rose thieves Someone be a rose tree Some be the wind’s daughters Some the rose thieves The rose thieves creep up on the rose tree One of them steals a rose Hides it in his heart The wind’s daughters appear See the tree plundered of its beauty And give chase to the rose thieves Open up their breasts one by one In some they find a heart In some so help me none They go on opening up their breasts Until they uncover one heart And in that heart the stolen rose 39Between games No one is resting This one keeps moving his eyes about Puts them on his shoulders And willy nilly goes backwards Puts them on the soles of his feet And again willy nilly comes back headlong And this one has turned himself altogether into an ear And heard everything that can’t be heard But he’s had enough And is aching to turn back into himself But without eyes he can’t see how And that one has uncovered all his faces And is chasing them one after the other over the roofs The last he throws underfoot And buries his head in his hands And this one has stretched out his look Stretched it from thumb to thumb And is walking along it walking ‘At first slowly afterwards more quickly . And quicker and quicker _ And that one is playing with his head Tosses it up into the air And catches it on his forefinger Or doesn’t catch it at all No one is resting » 40He Some bite off the others’ Arm or leg or whatever | Take it between their teeth © Run off as quick as they can ’ Bury it in the earth | The others run in all directions Sniff search sniff search ‘ Turn up all the earth “| Wfany are lucky enough to find their arm Or leg or whatever It’s their turn to bite The game goes on briskly As long as there are arms As long as there are legs ~ As long as there is anything whateverThe seed Someone sows someone Sows him in his head Stamps the earth down well ‘Waits for the seed to sprout The seed hollows out his head Turns it into a mouse hole The mice eat the seed There they lie dead The wind comes to live in the empty head And gives birth to fickle breezes” Leapfrog* Two be stones on each other’s hearts Stones like a house ~ Neither under the stone can budge And both struggle At least to lift a finger At least to click their tongue at least move their ears Orat least to blink Neither under the stone can budge And both struggle And exhaust themselves and fall asleep from exhaustion And it’s only in their sleep their hair stands on end (This game lasts a long time) * Leapfrog’, literally ‘Rotten nag’. It is sometimes played like our Leapfrog, but the genuine game is played in teams, as follows. One team of three or four form into the approximate shape of a horse: the first, standing, holds in his linked hands the head of the second, who stoops down. The third puts his head between the second’s legs and holds on to his legs. The fourth similarly to the third. Then the mem- bers of the second team jump on, trying to land on top of the other on a weak spot, so that they knock the first team over. The first team go on being the ‘nag’ until they withstand the assault.The hunter Someone goes in without knocking Goes into somebody’s one ear And comes out of the other Goes in with the step of a match The step of a lighted match Dances round inside his head He’s made it Someone goes in without knocking Goes into somebody’s one ear And doesn’t come out of the other He’s done forAshes Some are nights others stars Each night lights up its star And dances a black dance round it Until the star burns out Then the nights split up Some become stars The others remain nights Again cach night lights up its star And dances a black dance round it "Until the star burns out i The last night becomes both star and night It lights itself Dances the black dance round itselfAfter play At last the hands clutch at the stomach Lest the stomach burst with laughing But there is no stomach One hand just manages to lift itself To wipe the cold sweat from the forehead There’s no forehead either The other hand reaches to the heart Lest the heart leap out of the breast There isn’t a heart either Both hands drop Idle drop into the lap There’s no lap either On one hand now the rain is falling From the other grass is growing What more should I say 46One bone to another At the beginning That's better We've got away from the flesh _ Now we will do what we will _ Say something - Would you like to be . The backbone of a streak of lightning _ Say something more What should I say to you Pelvis of a storm Say something else ~ I don’t know anything else Ribs of the heavens |. We are not anyone’s bones Say something differentAfter the beginning What shall we do now Indeed what shall we do Now we'll have marrow for supper We ate the marrow for lunch Now a hollow feeling is nagging at me Then we'll make music We like music What shall we do when the dogs come They like bones Then we'll stick in their throats And have funIn the sun It’s marvellous sunbathing naked I never liked the flesh I wasn’t keen on those rags either Pm crazy about you naked like this Don’t let the sun caress you Let’s rather love each other just the two of us Only not here only not in the sun Here everything can be seen bone darling 49Underground Muscle of darkness muscle of flesh It comes to the same thing Well what shall we do now We'll invite all the bones of all times We'll bake in the sun What shall we do then Then we'll grow pure Go on growing as we please What shall we do afterwards Nothing we'll wander here and there We'll be eternal beings of bone Just wait for the earth to yawn $0In the moonlight What’s that now As if flesh some snowy flesh Were clinging to me don’t know what it is As if marrow were running through me Some cold marrow I don’t know either As if everything were beginning again With a more horrible beginning Do you know what Can you bark 5tBefore the end Where shall we go now Where should we go nowhere Where would two bones go else What shall we do there There long awaiting us There eagerly expecting us No one and his wife nothing What good are we to them They are old they are without bones We'll be like daughters to them §2At the end Tam a bone you are a bone Why have you swallowed me I can’t see myself any more What’s wrong with you It’s you have swallowed me I can’t see myself either Where am I now Now no one knows any more Who is where nor who is who Allis an ugly dream of dust Can you hear me Tcan hear both you and myself ' There’s a cockspur crowing out of us 53Give me back my rags Just come to my mind And my thoughts will scratch out your face Just come into my sight And my eyes will start snarling at you Just open your mouth And my silence will smash your jaws Just remind me of you And my remembering will paw up the ground under your feet That’s what it’s come to between usI Give me back my rags My rags of pure dreaming Of silken smiling of striped foreboding Of my cloth of lace My rags of spotted hope Of burnished desire of mottled glances Of skin from my face Give me back my rags Give me when I ask you nicely 552 Listen you monster . Take off that white scarf We know each other Since we were so high Guzzled from the same bow] Slept in the same bed With you evil-eyed knife Roamed the crooked world With you snake in the grass Do you hear dissembler Take off that white scarf Why lie to each other 56°3 “IT won’t take you a pick-a-back I won’t carry you wherever you say I won't not even shod with gold Nor harnessed to the wind’s three wheeled chariot Nor bridled with the rainbow’s bridle Don’t try to buy me _ I won’t not even with my feet in my pocket Nor threaded through a needle nor tied in a knot Nor reduced to a simple rod ; Don’t try to scare me | I won’t not even grilled nor twice grilled Neither raw nor salted | Twon’t not even in a dream _ Don’t kid yourself | It’s not on I won't4 Get out of my walled infinity Of the star circle round my heart Of my mouthful of sun Get out of the comic sea of my blood Of my flow of my ebb Get out of my stranded silence Get out I said get out Get out of my living abyss Of the bare father tree within me Get out how long must I cry get out Get out of my bursting head Get out only get out 583 Harebrained puppets possess you And I bath them in my blood Dress them in rags of my skin T make them swings of my hair Prams of my backbone Kites of my eyebrows ~ I form them butterflies of my smiles And wild beasts of my teeth For them to hunt to kill time "A fine sort of game that is6 Damn your root and blood and crown And all in your life Damn the thirsty pictures in your brain And the fire eyes on your finger tips And every every step Be cast into three cauldrons of crossgrained water Into three furnaces of symbol fire Into three nameless milkless pits Damn your cold breath down your gullet To the stone under your left breast To the cut-throat bird in that stone Be cast to the raven of ravens into the nest of emptiness Into the hungry shears of beginning and beginning Into the womb of heaven don’t I know it Damn your seed and sap and shine And darkness and stop at the end of my life And all in the world 607 What about my rags Won’t-you give them back won’t you T'll burn your eyebrows You won’t be invisible to me for ever I'll mix day and night in your mind You'll come beating your head on my door Tl cut off your singing nails _ So you can’t draw hopscotch through my brain Tl hound the fogs out of your bones So they drink the hemlock off your tongue You'll see what I'll do to you8 And you want us to love one another You can shape me from my ashes From the débris of my guffawing From my leftover tedium ‘You can gorgeous You can seize me by the hair of forgetting Embrace my night in an empty shirt Kiss my echo Well you don’t know how to love 629 Flee monster Even our footsteps bite each other Bite behind us in the dust We're not meant for each other Rockfast cold I look through you I pass through you from end to end _ This is no game _ Why ever did we mix the rags up | Give them back what do you want them for ~ There’s no use their fading on your back Give them back flee into your nowhere land Monster flee from the monster Where are your eyes _ Over here there’s a monster tooIo Black be your tongue black your noon black your hope All be black only my horror white My wolf be at your throat The storm be your bed My dread your pillow Broad your unrest-field Your food of fire your teeth of wax Now chew you glutton Chew all you want Dumb be your wind dumb water dumb flowers All be dumb only my gnashing aloud My hawk be at your heart Terror your mother be bereftII I’ve wiped your face off my face Ripped your shadow off my shadow Levelled the hills in you Turned your plains into hills Set your seasons at odds within you Turned all the ends of the world from you Wrapped the path of my life around you My impenetrable my impossible path Now you just try to find me . 6512 Enough chattering violets enough sweet trash I won’t hear anything know anything Enough enough of all Til say the last enough Fill my mouth with earth Grit my teeth To break off you skull guzzler To break off once for all Tl be just what I am Without root without branch without crown Fil lean on myself On my own bumps and bruises Tl be the hawthorn stake through you That’s all I can be in you In you spoil-sport in you muddle-head Never come backq3 Don’t try any tricks monster You hid a knife under your scarf You stepped over the line you tripped me up You spoiled the game \ That my heaven might turn over ‘That my sun might smash its head That my rags might be scattered Monster don’t try any tricks with the monster Give me back my rags Tl give you yoursThe quartz pebble* The quartz pebble To Dusan Radi¢ Headless limbless It appears With the excitable pulse of chance Tt moves With the shameless march of time Itholdsall * In its passionate Internal embrace A smooth white innocent corpse It smiles with the eyebrow of the moon *Quartz is found as round white pebbles in Yugoslavia.The heart of the quartz pebble They played with the pebble The stone like any other stone Played with them as if it had no heart They got angry with the pebble Smashed it in the grass Puzzled they saw its heart They opened the pebble’s heart In the heart a snake Asleeping coil without dreams They roused the snake The snake shot up into the heights They ran off far away They looked from afar The snake coiled round the horizon Swallowed it like an egg They came back to the place of their game No trace of snake or grass or bits of pebble Nothing anywhere far around They looked at each other they smiled And they winked at each otherThe dream of the quartz pebble A hand appeared out of the earth Flung the pebble up into the air Where is the pebble It hasn’t come back to earth It hasn’t climbed up to heaven What’s become of the pebble Have the heights devoured it Has it turned into a bird Here is the pebble Stubborn it has stayed in itself Not in heaven nor on earth It obeys itself Amongst the worlds a worldThe love of the quartz pebble He fell for a beautiful A rounded blue-eyed A frivolous endlessness He is quite transformed Into the white of her eye Only she understands him Only her embrace has The shape of his desire Dumb and boundless All her shadows He has captured in himself He is blind in his love And he sees No other beauty Save her he loves Who will cost him his life 7The adventure of the quartz pebble He has had enough of the circle The perfect circle around him He has stopped short He finds the load heavy His own load inside him He has let it fall He finds the stone hard The stone he is made of He has left it He feels cramped in himself In his own body He has come out He has hidden from himself Hidden in his own shadow 72- The secret of the quartz pebble He has filled himself with himself Has he gorged himself on his own tough flesh Does he feel ill Ask him don’t be afraid He isn’t begging for bread He is petrified in a blissful convulsion Is he perhaps pregnant Will he give birth to a stone Or to a wild beast or a streak of lighting Ask him as much as you like Don’t expect an answer Expect only a lump Or a second nose or a third eye Or who knows whatTwo quartz pebbles They look at each other dully The two pebbles look at each other Two sweets yesterday On the tongue of eternity Two stone tears today On an eyelash of the unknown Two flies of sand tomorrow In the ears of deafness Two merry dimples tomorrow In the cheeks of the day Two victims of a little joke A bad joke without a joker They look at each other dully With cold cruppers they look at each other They talk without lips They talk hot air 74fron SECONDARY HEAVEN (1968)The yawn of yawns The stargazer’s legacy His words remained after him Fairer than the world No one dares gaze at them They wait at the turnings of tinie Greater than people Who can pronounce them They lie on the dumb earth Heavier than bones of life Death didn’t manage To carry them off as a dowry No one can lift them up No one throw them down | The falling stars hide their heads In the shadows of his wordsA forgetful number Once upon a time there was a number Pure and round like the sun But alone very much alone It began to reckon with itself It divided multiplied itself It subtracted added itself And remained always alone It stopped reckoning with itself And shut itself up in its round And sunny purity Outside were left the fiery Traces of its reckoning They began to chase each other through the dark To divide when they should have multiplied themselves To subtract when they should have added themselves That’s what happens in the dark And there was no one to ask it To stop the traces And to rub them outA conceited mistake Once upon a time there was a mistake So silly so small That no one would even have noticed it It couldn’t bear To see itself to hear of itself It invented all manner of things Just to prove That it didn’t really exist It invented space To put its proofs in And time to keep its proofs And the world to see its proofs All it invented Was not so silly Nor so small But was of course mistaken Could it have been otherwise 78A wise triangle Once upon a time there was a triangle It had three sides The fourth it hid In its glowing centre By day it would climb to its three vertices And admire its centre By night it would rest In one of its three angles At dawn it would watch its three sides Turned into three glowing wheels Disappear into the blue of no return It would take out its fourth side Kiss it break it three times And hide it once more in its former place "And again it had three sides And again by day it would climb . To its three vertices | And admire its centre And by night it would rest In one of its three anglesPetrified echoes Once upon a time there was an infinity of echoes They served one voice Built him arcades The arcades collapsed They had built them crooked The dust covered them They left the dangerous service Became petrified from hunger They flew off petrified To find to tear to pieces the lips Out of which the voice had come They flew who knows how long And silly blind things didn’t see That they were flying round the very border of the lips They were looking for 80The story of a story Once upon a time there was a story Its end came Before its beginning And its beginning came After its end Its heroes entered it After their death And left it Before their birth Its heroes talked ' About some earth about some heaven They said all sorts of things Only they didn’t say : What they themselves didn’t know That they are only heroes in a story Ina story whose end comes Before its beginning And whose beginning comes After its end 81The yawn of yawns Once upon a time there was a yawn Not under the palate not under the hat Not in the mouth not in anything It was bigger than everything Bigger than its own bigness From time to time Its dull darkness desperate darkness In desperation would flash here and there You might think it was stars Once upon a time there was a yawn Boring like any yawn And still it seems it lasts 82Signs An intruder A drop of blood in the corner of heaven Have the stars perhaps again begun To divide the blue to bite each other Or to kiss each other At the sun’s round table Nothing is said about it Only the fiery bread is broken Beakers of light pass from hand to hand "And the dead stars gnaw their own bones . What does the drop of blood want in the corner of heaven In that one-eyed corner of heaven 83A winged pipe A winged pipe flies around The streaks of lightning in a vast coil With a song it tries to lure them somewhere Is it back to the clouds Or to another lovelier heaven Or to earth amongst men It’s become entangled in the tongues of flame Both song and wings are on fire And its shadow on the gates of heaven Doesn’t it know some other song , With this it will only enrage the lightning streaks And won’t lure them anywhere 84An obstinate bundle A white formless bundle Moves over the clear heaven. Constantly with all its strength it rocks from side to side Tied crosswise with green string And so prepares its step Constantly struggling it falls ~ On to the uncaring soil of heaven _ And so marks time Above it one star keeps silence Below it another star keeps silence To its right an old sun philosophizes To its left a young moon prattles ' Why doesn’t it just calm down for once The good-natured thunder from the clear heaven Will certainly untie it 8sA homeless head A severed head A head with a flower between its teeth Wandering circles the earth The sun meets it It bows to him And goes on its way The moon meets it To him it smiles And does not stop on its way Why does it growl at the earth Can’t it return : Or leave for ever Its lowering lips would know 86A condemned dagger A naked grey-eyed dagger Lies amid the Milky Way How it wriggles In the star dust Is it thirsty for blood How it leaps up Does it want to stab Its own innocent shadow And how it flashes its blades Flashes on all sides Is it signalling to someone The processions of stars avoid it And leave an empty space + In the shape of a heart around it Where is the most glorious hand That flung it up there _ To take it back again 87Burning hands Two burning hands are drowning In the depths of heaven They do not grasp at the star That is floating around them And blinking and crossing itself They are saying something with their fingers Who can guess The tongue of fingers in the flame Solemnly they put their palms together To signify a roof top Are they talking of the old house That they left burnt down Or perhaps of the new one That they are just thinking of building 88‘The last cord A fat gay-patterned cord . Crawls amongst the constellations And can scarcely get through At each starry crossroads It ties itself'a knot To remember all the paths Its endless end It ceaselessly draws Out of the blue womb of heaven. It crawls amongst the constellations Towards the very heart of the world And never gets tangledDissension A crowned apple Take the sun out of your mouth Night is burying us alive This is my apple From heaven it fell on to my tongue Leave me alone to enjoy it Open your mouth cipher that dawn may come to us That the sun may crown us too Pray that I do not open my mouth There are no more sweet jobs In the apple for you maggots_ A blue noose Why do you squeeze our necks with the horizon Tlike to have the pleats of heaven Fall thickly over my thighs You'll throttle us with that belt I like your lament for the blue noose When J am tired and unbelt myselfA high path Pick up your big foot You’re treading on our thought TI cannot carry my steps Through you in my arms Move off our thought Will bite the stars off the soles of your feet . Icannot sacrifice my path It leads me through your heads‘Hardworking threads » Why do your glances Stitch up our eyelids T don’t know what the sunbeams Do behind my back Why don’t you turn your head To see your glances _ I don’t know now where my head is _ If you need it you find it .Foster brood Gather up your thunderbolts That are hatching out under our heart Why do you not cherish The young echoes of my words yourselves Gather them up they'll smash both us And you to smithereens Why do you not come on their tail And fly into my heartFertile fire Cut yourself lengthwise cipher That we too may stand upright Have you really grown so much Playing on my fire Cut yourself crosswise cipher That we too may spread our arms Are you really prepared to fly up By yourselves to the source of my fireFree flight Give us leave to fly away Out of your palace without foundation Ihave forged you into stars Under the vault of my skull Fly away who's stopping you Give us leave to perish Each flight brings us back to the court Got you there birds Cut off your wings That your flight may be free 96Imitation of the sun Death of the sun father Three paces from the top of heaven From the lime in everlasting flower The old sun stopped Turned red turned green Turned round himself three times ' And went back to his rising (So as not to die in our sight) They say there is a son and heir Before the golden-eye is born for us too We shall have taught this darkness to shineBlind sun Two lame sunbeams Lead the blind sun Morning is seeking his fortune On the other side of heaven He isn’t at his own doorstep Midday has fallen low He’s gadding about with the lightning He’s never at home Evening has gone out into the world With his bedding on his back He’s begging on some star With open arms Only night has come out To meet the blind sun 98Clash at the zenith A blue sun was born In heaven’s left arm pit A black sun was born In heaven’s right arm pit The blue one climbs the black one climbs Towards the tower in the zenith Where desolation now resides ‘We have gone down naked into ourselves ‘We open up the mole hills We whisper the secret name Of our own native sun The golden tripod from the tower Has set out in three directionsPreparations for a welcome ‘We set up a gate Of our flowering bones At the way into heaven We spread half our soul Up one slope of heaven We devise a table Of our petrified hands At the very top of heaven We spread half our soul Down the other slope of heaven We build a bed | Of our leafy heart | At the way out of heaven We do all this in the dark - Alone without the help of time We wonder if these are really Preparations for a welcome Or only for a farewell 100Midnight sun From a huge black egg A sun was hatched to us It shone on our ribs It opened heaven wide In our wretched breasts Tt never set But it never rose either It turned everything in us gold It turned nothing green Around us around that gold It changed into a tombstone On our living heart IOrForeign sun Whose head did this one-eyed bastard Drop out of Who's he gawping at now Who’s he rolling after Over the fallow heavens Why is he sizing us up He'd just love to burn us to cinders As if from down here we Had doused his rabid father With cold water He’d better cool off Heaven’s made a mistake 102Imitation of the sun The heart of one of us rose High into the burnt-out heaven It moved off along the sun’s path Overgrown with iron weeds And set behind the charred horizon - We waited in vain for it to return With the golden apple-bearer Or at least with twelve fiery branches Since then we all carry Our hearts on a heavy chain Fastened to a faithful rib 103Schism Gluttonous smoke Why did you abandon me As the smoke bore me upwards It was you abandoned us at the bottom Of your emptied lower cauldron Why did you not seek me As the same smoke bore me downwards It’s for you to seek us now on the rim Of your overturned upper cauldron Why did you not call to me | As the smoke swallowed me alive ‘ It’s for you to call to us now through the ears Of both lower and upper cauldrons 104-A cake of ashes . Are you still keeping my fire That I left you You left us Astale cake of ashes Have you unlocked the sign Of my gate on the crust We have unlocked the sign Of your crossed daggers Are you eating the golden Sunflower hidden within it Your cake has eaten our hands As we were breaking itAn extinguished wheel Where were you going so happily With my fiery wheel of thought We turned on the spot With it extinguished round our neck Where did you get to so happily With my poor blind wheel Carried away we drove it To overtake itself Where did you vanish to With my demented wheel Angry we pulled it off our neck Together with our head 106‘A fireproof spool _. Are you still hanging headless By one of my black rays Weare hanging in your ancient smoke By one of our golden threads - Do you still not know in the dark ‘That my ray has burnt out We know that the faithful thread _ Has unwound from our heart { | Do you still not see in the dark ‘That my ray has snapped We see that our thread is searching High above the heart for its spoolA clot of darkness Do you not recognize the clot Of my ancient grumous darkness We are cutting to pieces before it Innocent goldenhaired remembering Do you not yearn for its secret By which it would illuminate you We are chasing forgetting around it To bite its own tail Do you not grasp its circles Above your empty shoulders We are afraid lest your clot Replace our lost head 108The fiery sunflower 5 "Whence comes at the top of your spine The dancing circle of fiery tongues " "We were playing tunes on our shinbones It formed of itself ‘Whence comes in the midst of your circle _ The scorched many-eyed field ‘We were slapping our thighs It began to glow hot of itself _ Whence comes your hidden sunflower -- Whole unbroken uneaten ~ We found it on our shoulders _ In place of our red-hot headAn incandescent kiss What are you doing without my blue glory In your soft tower tending to its fall We are setting fire to our last breath Above the mouth of your lower cauldron What are you starting without my start Behind your bars the bones We are setting fire to our first loneliness Below the mouth of your upper cauldron What are you ending without my end Behind your chirping bolt We are dreaming that from the incandescent kiss We save for ourselves the cauldrons’ ears IIoThe lime in the midst of the heart “The song of young truth Truth sang in the darkness On top of the lime in the midst of the heart ‘The sun it said will ripen On top of the lime in the midst of the heart If the eyes shine on it We mocked the song |’ Seized and bound truth | And murdered it here under the lime » The eyes were busy ~ Outside in another darkness _ And saw nothingA dragon in the womb A fiery dragon in the womb In the dragon a red cave Tn the cave a white lamb In the lamb the old heaven We fed the dragon with earth We wanted to tame it And steal the old heaven We were left without earth We didn’t know where to go next We mounted the dragon’s tail The dragon looked at us furiously We took fright at our own face In the dragon’s eyes We jumped into the dragon’s jaws Crouched behind his teeth And waited for the fire to save us 112“The taming of the dagger A dagger hung a long time Squinting above our heart The severed wings flew up Out of the lime in the midst of the heart And tamed the dagger The wings taught the dagger In flight to trace The young sun’s face around the heart "The wings took the dagger : Broken down by its lesson Somewhere high up into the dark We bowed low To the lime in the midst of the heart , 113A fish in the soul A silver fish in the soul In the fish a little straw On the straw a gay patterned cloth On the cloth three virgin stars We angled for the silver fish We were quite famished The fish scarcely tried to escape We opened the fish Out of the fish spilt a little straw The gay patterned cloth fell apart And the three virgin stars Lost their virginity As for the silver fish Not even the cats would have eaten it We were terribly disappointed It is dark now in our soul II4The suffering of the golden tripod A golden tripod limped Around our hidden heart And with its leg dug the darkness ‘We were afraid it might dig Under the lime in the midst of the heart Certainly it wanted to dig out someone ~ Who had already sat on it _ Or someone who would yet sit on it It limped around the buried secret Counted over its legs And dug itself out three graves We danced the sun dance Around the lime in the midst of the heart 1sA dove in the head A transparent dove in the head In the dove a clay coffer In the coffer a dead sea In the sea a blessed moon We split open the dove Smashed the clay coffer Spilt the dead sea ‘We waded into the sea Got to the bottom Deep below the bottom We saw the transparent dove And in it a young moon ‘We came to the surface High above the surface Again we saw the dove And in it a full moon We began to drink the dead sea 116 | i |The lime in the midst of the heart A flowering lime in the midst of the heart Beneath the lime a buried cauldron In the cauldron twelve clouds In the clouds a young sun We dug for the cauldron through the heart Dug out the twelve clouds The cauldron fled with the sun - From one depth to another | We gaped into the last depth | Deeper than our own life | We threw up the digging We cut down the lime to warm ourselves Cold gripped us at the heartHeaven’s ring The stargazer’s death He had to die they say The stars were closer to him Even than people He was eaten they say by ants He imagined that stars Gave birth to ants and ants to stars So he filled the house with ants His heavenly harlots they say Cost him his head And the rumours are absurd of a dagger With human fingerprints He was simply out of this world they say He had gone to find the sunflower In which meet the paths Of every heart and every star He had to die they say~ Heaven’s ring ~ Ring no one’s ring How did you get lost How fall from heaven somewhere Rather everywhere than somewhere Why did you at once marry Your old your ancient shine _ To your young emptiness They have forgotten both you And their wedding night | Since then your shine has taken to drink Your emptiness has run to fat You are lost again Here is my ring finger Settle down on itNothingness Nothingness you were asleep And dreamt that you were something Something caught fire The flame writhed In blind agonies You woke up nothingness And warmed your back At the dream flame You didn’t see the flame’s agonies Whole worlds of agonies Your back is short-sighted Nothingness you fell asleep again And dreamt that you were nothing The flame went out Its agonies received their sight And they too went out in bliss | |You had no proper father “Your mother wasn’t at home When you saw the world in yourself You were born by mistake You have the figure of an abandoned abyss There’s a smell of absence about you You gave birth to yourself You run around with fiery sluts » You break your heads one after the other You jump out of one of your mouths into another ~ And give new life to the old mistake , Stoop down naked if you can To my last letter And follow in its steps Thave an idea orphan-child “That it leads into some sort of presenceThe shadow maker You walk through a whole eternity Along your personal infinity From head to heels and back You shine on yourself In your head is the zenith In your heels the setting of your shining Before the setting you let your shadows Stretch move away Work miracles and shame And bow to themselves At the zenith you cut the shadows back To their proper size You teach them to bow to you And as they bow they disappear You walk this way even today But you can’t be seen for shadows 122Built you your house themselves ‘Where are you carrying it on the towel Lame time is coming after you To catch you up to tread on you Put out your horns snail . ‘You crawl over the vast cheek Which you will never survey | Straight into the maw of nothingness : Turn aside to the life line ; On my dreamed hand Before it is too late ; And bequeath to me © “The wonder-working towel of silver | |Fugitive stars You looked at each other stars Stealthily that heaven should not see You meant well You were misunderstood Dawn found you cold Far from your hearth Far from the gate of heaven Look at me stars Stealthily that earth should not see Give me secret signs I will give you a cherrywood staff And one of my wrinkles as path And one of my lashes as guide To bring you home 124 |