Miroslav Válek - The touches

Miroslav Válek - The touches
(Dotyky)

Since the morning the telegrams keep coming to your home,
the sea of letters floods the house,
telephones began to ring all at once.
It is nothing to worry about, it is nothing to worry about,
it is only that I am calling you incessantly,
re-establishing the broken connection.
I am so lucky they have believed me
at the post office and at the phone switchboard,
that I had a million greetings for you,
that I had a million requests on you :
Do not be angry and,
it is horribly important,
I am almost crazy because of that,
I am horribly in love with you,
leave everything as it it is,
let the water burn in the bathroom,
let the gas flow in the kitchen,
let the foolish mirrors in your room turning,
and come to me by the first train,
come here to the vast plain !
Seven black horses will wait for you at the station,
all of them with a star on its forehead,
the jasmine will blossom,
the pollen will fall from the apricots
softer than your powder Soir de Paris.
Hurry up, on the corner
the evening is already hooting,
blue painted like a vintage car,
the town sun, a screechy worn out vinyl record
shifts down bellow the horizon,
but the one of ours,
the shiny casserole of copper,
sets down delightfully,
and when it touches the earth, it is all heard.
The black bull in the coopertative-farm stable
in a velvet voice finished its lyrical intermezzo,
the plain falls on its knees and prepares to sleep.
The time of shaking off the boots has come,
stamp like some festive parade,
because here in every house the men are like iron
and the sound has space enough for start,
thus everyone's dreams are heard ...
Dreams about :
glass,
stones,
metals,
caresses of hands,
bent index finger knocking on a window,
the fleeting smile you were waiting for
Dreamt are things unspeakable,
things wonderful and simple like a snowdrop
and my eyes on the bottom of your eyes,
we dream dreams
and everything is like a content of the magician's hat.
The night, the black hat with a wide brim,
overturns inside out into the morning.
Only now you can see how palpable the dreams are
The nervous fingers of TV antennas puncture the darkness,
double rows of new houses trot to the villages,
the morning is stuffy like an after-ball ballroom,
the single sad rook in the sky revolves like a fan,
the fat wheat-ears faint with astonishment,
when the local village radio calls in harsh voice :
Come to harvest, come to harvest !
In a moment the village is empty like a blown out egg
Only the grandma sits at the door and silently sings for herself :
"She was sieving the flour
Straight to the wooden floor ... "
Grandma, the poor blind thing !
She used to milk the cows in Herz's farmstead.
She used to pray for long life and lucky death.
Her life has elapsed like the stroke of a whip - it was exactly so painful.
And now she does not know this world at all.
She does not remember the names of her grandchildren, she starts with fear when there is a laugh in the house,
the evening brings her a strange smell of the burnt diesel,
but the earth she takes to her fingers is still good.
It is the same soil as then ...
The dress of silk, sixteen years of age and the long braid
are already gone,
but the plain is still here to stay, the plain is eternal
it only breathes faster and louder.
At the time of feast roast geese fly here,
a sparrowhawk starts to the sky vertically like a rocket,
in autumn the violet rains rain to the gardens,
heavy drops of plums knock on the tired soil.
The plain has given away its frut, it has no more to say and it is silent.
Sleepy, blinded by syrup and sugar, it puts on a quilted coat.
On St.Martin's day comes the first snow.