Miroslav Válek - The gloom

Miroslav Válek - The gloom
(Skľúčenosť)

I would like to be the pharaoh with an achate eye
I would like to retain in supply
my lead, my distance from the affairs
After all that play is still too complicated
and you never know if you are the one who seeks or is sought for.
The ingenuity of a hideaway, distances, even the time mean so little that only coincidence or a momentary distraction of fate
allow the things to disappear from memory,
but what has happened, lasts, it remains within us,
we are in a way involved in the flood of the world,
even the improbable becomes sometimes obvious.
Do you remember ?
In the burning air, in the fire of lilies,
when, hidden from all
we saw the souls of things dazzlingly shine,
you stretched your hand saying :
"I feel the sunspots"

(I)

Run, Gaius Iulius Ceasar
I will count to thousand and find you.
I see you, sweet Cleopatra.
To your hair the raven was sinking and until now
his wings remain in the sky - severity of eyebrows
and beneath it quietness so dark
that you must believe in blue eyes of thunder
and ask the height, albeit kneeling,
to let it happen.
The planet ?
Some joke
of some god !
Go, seek !
There is always something hidden
behind the back of something.
Dig under the poplar in which swears
the lame demon of the tree,
where groundwaters falls asleep on the sand's forearm,
where the clavicles guard their secrets
and shy naked worms tie hands of corpses.
It thundered in the boulders
where the herds are worried,
as if the air listened heavy headed by the rain,
as if the grass dodged before some voice :
Enter the things and tell what you have seen !
You saw the love contradict its cause,
denying connection between sex and fetus,
preparing its green beds,
her ceremonial riding corps entering the purple,
covering itself,
with its dog tongue licking the Moon down from the sky
- dynamite -
her bloody beds hanging on every shrub !
Drink from the footprints of bees, learn from the wisdom of insects,
which flying browses the eternity
so incredibly fast that it forgets
even before he gets the knowledge.
Oh, you already know,
where water becomes tear,
why the axe enters the memory of seed
and how the glory of body
is locked behind !
And where is the skull of Minotaur ?
Where is that tender lover
Where are the children of Herod ?
Where are the men who entered the fire as men
and left it as a wave ?
Maybe in the future. I don't know.
What is past and what is future ?
I can not distinct
the sound of falling water from the falling water.
I am the cause as well as the consequence
just as the butterfly is the future of the caterpillar
and the caterpillar is the future of the butterfly.
And love ? And hatred ?
Ugliness and beauty ?
The are too similar, much too similar
and conspired
up to the sweat of the mirror,
they show to our eyes every our mistake.
Do not regret.
The life is only carrying a lamp from place to place
in a dark room :
Always a bit of light from slightly other side,
but it is still the same face which we see.
Do not say what you suspect.
I believe,
that a spoken word may still list the universe.
I emphasize
the infinity of sex
as well as sexlessness of death.
Death speaks to us in soprano,
sleeps in the ear of the music,
listens to our hoarse bass and suffers
with feeling of inferiority.
And yet every day it comes down and asks
to be allowed to create the total compliance,
something between yes and no,
some sort of strong relationship between what was and what is.
Death, which likes the absence of wind so much
that every our breath causes ache in its back,
death, which feels the movement of a future fetus
as a storm in its knee,
paints the hurricane to the corner of its eyes, comes,
death since the creation of the world comes in this way
and investigates :
What is the man ?
Oh, the man !
A sun shield for sunflower,
A shelter from storms for earthworms,
A crutch under the armpits of clay !
Nevertheless -
Is there but one death ? Is not there a thousand of deaths ?
Don't wonder about it. Don't worry.
Of course it is still possible that happens only
what has already been thought,
yet unspoken repeats, forgotten returns.

(II)

Before the Christmas in the year nineteen sixty four
the head of Holofernes travelled by a train
so lovely cut off,
that a small merry-go-round full of good people
revolved around it.
It was a bright day
and a razor blade lied between them,
which they were passing around from eyes to eyes
At the same time Ramses II lay
beneath the concrete pavement of the Poplar street,
because his wife loved a chaffeur,
who at first was not willing. Then he rang.
My lord ! How could it happen ?
She is innocent.
She only walked down the street
with black horns in her eyes.
Sometimes it seems to me that the Earth as well is a head
separated from a huge trunk and thrown
to something which is approximately known as the universe.
So the swords on the throat,
violence, blood
and all the assassinations
are only imitations
of that primordial gesture ?
And meanness and treachery
and wars
and plague,
and our embraces under the seal of the moon,
oaths whispered to the sleeve of night,
in the cat silver of stars,
yes, that love, that lie,
all that already have been ?
Is it only inertia what makes us
keep returning to ourselves, to begin
in the same way as before ?
Oh, before !
I recollect you in fire by which I remembered you in pink
and in which your hair were suffocating me like smoke !
And you kept your hands above it,
you were incantating it,
your fingers were counted by the fire,
you tamer of snakes !
In your hands also Pompeii as well as Hiroshima were burning,
your hands,
lit by the white rays of flour,
even in the hour of death were protecting the yeast.
You were the everyday bread of the world !
This happened,
it was written,
you already know it.
So why do you allow me to enter your shadow
with my naked leg ?
I am only a knife,
in your vicinity
crossed with lightning.
Choose the lightning !
My hands are to the elbows worn from your skin,
I touch you as an animal,
I open you by memory with my teeth,
you burn my tongue like a bad spirit.
You crazy lamb !
With hoofs pointing to the sky you will be sacrificed !
Save yourself ! Run away !
Oh, before !
How many thousands of years your blood has been dropping ?
From how many tiles you were secretly wiping it away ?
And it you wanted,
you could deny even the crack in the heaven's vault,
if you wanted,
you could keep even a hair between your thighs
you would deny even deer and trains.
You are the water
I am the thirst
The night is coming
The sky overgrows with black hair
and it dawns as if inside horse's teeth.
I can hear a tiny pin fall under your skin.

(III)

Close to the stop of trolley number 18
Bones were carried away from a cemetery.
It was July the thirteenth, the judgment day
and the sun was so orange
and so terribly beating to the heads,
that from a grave
incredible dancers ascended,
medics with skin of melted copper in a yellow pillar of fire
and students of the conservatory
with such a music in their calves
that even the wood has forgotten its perfect pitch
They sounded to the men in their eyes,
sowed seeds,
with a bare thumb
itched clay on its wrist,
they ate bread
and as if from a dream smiled.
Close to the stop of trolley number 18
behind the fence of the cemetery
an old woman was looking for bones
Close to the stop of trolley number 18
an old woman
into her black skirt heartrending was crying.
There was sun, it was orange
there was too much sun for such a day
She could not see
neither a little hole in the skull,
nor the little finger,
as if it even had not been buried
nor her own hand before her eyes
she could not see.
And the sun was so orange
and so terribly beating in the head !
An occasional gravedigger lay in the grass
drinking cheap rum and singing :
"And who has seen,
and who has seen,
the Jewish god,
in a red cap,
without his rod ?"
How many things are there we have not seen,
which we will never see
and before which we are blind,
confusingly rampaging in the driving lane ?
So the time passes, so will pass alongside
loves and chances,
opportunities and friendships.
Only occasionally
the good luck will strike us with a shiny fender
and falling we will see in it our sudden portrait,
a terrible face,
as if photographed through the pupil of the devil.
So the time elapses
the rain uncaringly counts its drops for insomnia of the nights,
we hurry home, put the life down like the pants,
which have traces of knees so clearly visible
as if we have been kneeling on the stairs
of some secret Calvaries,
we hurry up,
switch off the lights,
in the moonlight drink our bromine
and cheer up
by the obedient babble of gas.
So good bye.
You are falling to a blue corolla's glow
only your fingers still shine yellow
only the styles above the level of indigo scents.
That is where a tear in the eye of tear cries
that is where you white switches in your teeth crush,
that is where the darkness checkmate of your complexion unbuttons,
that is where the wood's clay aches because of hard stones,
that is where it with little tongues, stained with snake venom, blows from the emptiness of bones.
That is where, a little nowhere, a little in eternity
you will be alone.
Walled up in the walls kneeled
while the band returns from the funeral.
A horse in snow. People like soot, black and crass.
Night with dark face falls on the brass.
The air is like glass
Where did the robbed woman pass ?
The woman in black skirt, who walks
like a clear dew on the water's paths,
behind every coffin, in each procession,
already so transparent,
that she more resembles non-water,
already almost dew of dew, a mere nothing
carries inside her a whip crackling
and with steps short only like the hands of grass
even a bit shorter,
she walks the whole eternity.
The blind circle she revolves on her finger like a key,
she locks the world, opens for her the heaven,
in the loneliness of her life she tortures her god :
My God, you have not risen from the dead.
My God, you have already disappeared.
My God, have you never been ?
And again the sound of trumpet behind the window lights beats down.
Some crazy jazz. The drunken saints
lie on the pavements.
Silence.
Mother, don't you sleep ?
Darkness. Wind tunes in his palm the violin.
Tonight, naked and bloody
I lashed out of the fire and flew up.
I know : the certainty
I will hang on the nail my black hat black like tar.
(Not because you will not be, but because you now are)
Do not lift it.
Cover it with your hand.
Under the hat
darkness.
Love will subsist us from the pure water,
Be always with me
and more than yourself love me.
So to live on. To stand on your feet,
to resemble the sea,
not to count the ebbs.
I know : the fear.
The unpatient count to thousand.
You already feel strange contours within.
Run away ...

Jan Skácel - How calves come to this world

Jan Skácel - How calves come to this world
(Jak přicházejí na svět telátka)

From time to time the cow wistfully boos
and looks back
with her eyes on achate.
Streams of milk jangle on the pails
in the draft wave golden strings of manure,
Every time when the door opens,
the morning comes within.
The cow-house is full of sturry night.
We are waiting.
Suddenly tiny hoofs appear,
touch the light,
shake down the warm darkness,
all with tender force pull the rope,
until the wet calf
through our lap slips into the straw.
So we have, damn it, at least the common joy
and go hastily home to shave ourselves,
to furrow the stubble, the white grass for the night.
A little stick full of song flows in the sky.
(So come to this world calves
and everything lovely.)

Miroslav Válek - From the absolute diary 1

Miroslav Válek - From the absolute diary 1
(Z absolútneho denníka 1)

(2)

When you will hang on a thin wire
and your legs will dangle in the draft
you will understand,
that these are but next steps to emptiness,
So stop it, the fair is already over
and you sold yourself alive ...
You were always a tiny toy donkey, who runs in a little case,
you were always closed
it was possible to wind-up you with a key
and, carrying your load, you were carried,
but in other direction.
It is the very mechanic of motion,
it is the famous gig of a fool
who comes to make sure he is not here any more.
but, returning, he sees that he has not left yet
and so he sits there, wails on the stairs,
desperately crying against the roaring laughter of the audience :
"For my Lord's sake, who am I and where am I rushing ?"
The amount of time decreases like flour from a sack.
You could be a beautiful cadaver,
you could lie in the grass, look under the skirts of the world,
have a cricket in your ear,
become yellow by music,
you could be cited,
a confectionary could be named after you ...
And what are you ?
A null. A little bunch of bones. In the best case
a thing sometimes useful for lessons of anatomy.
You are already decaying
you and that old umbrella which is so often left behind,
nothing, mere skeletons in a dark cabinet ...
Below the basket of your thorax
let us play basketball with the Moon !
Nothing. Darkness, dust and chalk !
Only gradually
appear poplars and grasses, starfish,
the Earth tears apart, the continents separate and flow away from each other ...
Where were you at that time, homo sapiens ?
To try it again with you ?
Cover you with the silk shine ?
Oh, black umbrella,
the full stop after the life !
I want to be unbinding with you,
to play you from one ear to another like a banal music,
to decompose you in my head,
a meteor would become of you
you would excite the town !

(4)

We fall as if after run, we spit out bloody towns,
we leave them, suffocate them with our own hands
and in front of the mirror
we uncover the sex of underaged word,
ready to sleep with every better poem.
We envy each other, we hate each other.
We devour our narcotics like you your steaks
in order to see a butterfly going to the state of rose.
We worry women, we let ourselves to be worried by women,
we write, we write,
the last petticoat of the night is for a long time full with writing
and no one knows what the poetry is.
Some people define it as an accepted proposal to termination of virginity
and others as coitus interruptus of emotion with reason,
but it is a fatal error !
The poetry wears a motley shirt
and doesn't care about the good manners !
From this point of view
the comet in your head
and the moon behind your fingernail
can be quite suitable for a poem,
but the poetry is something else, dear friends !
It begins when you notice that the skeletoned man moved in your entrails,
that he reached your pocket from inside and inspects
the year, the month and the day when you were born,
the colour of your eyes,
your special signs ...
It is the time of a poem.
Shiver bacause it is coming
message in the form of seed,
pain and blood,
oil into fire.
So the white-hot nakedness hisses
everywhere around
merry-go-rounds of trees are revolving
and revolving ...
Every poem has its time,
but the time of the poem is shorter than you think.

(7)

Oh, aquamarines of the night are cold,
your eyes hurt me, orange flames !
Brown, the smell of burned leathers,
rope around the neck. White, skin
of lily-of-the-valley, knives and feathers !
Don't bother me, I know it,
you also used to wail
to the hair of a perfumery clerk.
At that time you were rich
and beloved !
Good morning, miss.
Honey shines in your premises,
madness of salvia,
purple, fire,
musks.
And where is the poem ?
Sorry, we haven't got it !
Oh, aquamarines are cold !

(9)

Poor poet who loots
the treasuries and the churches,
Faithful ox of plowing words,
with Andromeda in his muzzle !
Occasionally you will be booed out,
you will go to the fire,
all shames of the world in you will be counted
and their sum will add up to your debit.
Your humiliations will be categorized as the first and the second
And the first will enter the second,
to fulfil them while themselves fulfilled by them.
Oh, tender member !
Your name is loss of semen
and your pregnancies will never end by the cry of offsprings.
Anybody will spit on you
and women you loved will be present,
with their eyes so much narrowed,
that razor blades will shed tears under your feet ...
It is not like when you drunk
by various music of a casual body
to the necklines small moons vomitted !
Where is the woman who does not strip herself
in the iris of your eye ?
And anyway -
who, helpless before the mysteries of flower's stigmata,
prayed for patience ?
Who refused to eat lilies ?
Who even the naked dew did not lick ?
Who believed that all grains of pollen are counted ?
Who pitied the light dandelions ?
You swindler !
Nobody knows what you carried, but you carried it in such a way
so that all might believe you have a small carriage
into which you store
silver hoofs of lost happiness.
Gradually, you told your entire biography,
but you purposedly forgot some trifle thing,
that became the key point of the poem

(10)

The amount of time decreases - only look forward to the future.
You are the runner with a young fox under your shirt !

Jan Skácel - Where our mothers go

Jan Skácel - Where our mothers go
(Kam odcházejí maminky)

And I know where our mothers go,
in July they will begin to ramble
at first but a little and during the day,
so as not to darken.
Then they are absent for a long, long time,
they were far away.
They say that once upon a time
lived a blind blacksmith in their home.
And that everyone once threw a stone.
They are limping a little like wounded birds.
One day we must go and look for our mother
in the night grass. By the morning we reach
a small gate overgrown with weed.
There stands up dewed
in old man's beard a strange childhood.
We meet a girl who we know from somewhere.
I would like to ask, but I am not allowed.

Miroslav Válek - Drumming to the other side

Miroslav Válek - Drumming to the other side
(Bubnovanie na opačnú stranu)

Short before death I buy a chromed bike
ringing to all sides of the world that you are lovely.
Perhaps in March
when there are smokes above the earth like from crematories
the soil burns the dead body of the last year's weed,
perhaps in March, getting off a tram,
I fell in love with you in the time of germination.
At that time the submarine fleet of cereal grains
only hesitantly extended out its periscopes,
the spring was a cold fever
it shook the aspens all evening,
a silly rain was falling
already by heart and with no effort.
On that day you found a mirror and a drowned kitten
with a tie of silk
- oh, beautified death, more cruel
than the other ordinary killings -
You combed your hair kneeling
and against the riding train's direction
a small star rose on the top of your head.
*
I adore soldiers,
the smell of their belts and soured bread,
I like you,
generals of riding corps
and commanders of regiments' band,
all of you who have a star less,
I humbly love.
The pink nostrills of your horses excite women
and your drums, their laconic thundering
- like a woken-up gorilla running across the dark forest !
And then silence and then again and again
they drum on the old leather of the world :
Formation of mountain ranges and perishing of oceans,
move of nations and sudden slide of rocks !
At the end only a little meaningless rumble,
aldermen march hitting their bald heads with hands :
How could we ... How might we allow ...
But the progress of humankind started already a long time before them.
Drums passed through centuries,
Drums were predicting the future,
drums of rebellions and storms of drums beneath the sky,
boomerang of drums driving herds to the walls,
bulldogs of drums against the slaves,
dear baby of drums, I am swinging you,
orphan, I will put you like a frozen bird on album
of a senile retired general,
bubbles of drums,
what a shame,
a drum caught rust and went bust !
So it happened as I supposed :
We have forgotten the accidental love,
her name, her taste,
we have found others, so it goes
and maybe after seven hundred years
during deep plowing,
her canine tooth will shine on, yellow like a wasp in raspberries.
Excuse us, lovely Brunhilde.
And that is the opportunity to repeat it all again.
So once more,
I like you,
generals of riding corps,
oh, Marshal Ney,
Scipio Africanus,
Genghis Khan,
inventors of unpunishable death,
devourers of fire,
jugglers,
throwing their knives against history.
And the Earth spins more and more furiously,
the sun sets behind the horse manes,
hoofs on the glass
drumming on the other side of the world,
crazy charleston,
stamp of avalanches,
jungle !
Where is your whip, tamers of pardals and pumas ?
The death - a rusty mare - neighs so urgently,
cultivate that tender beast,
that clean flower,
until it becomes the absolute rose,
suitable for birthday but also for a deep sleep,
or for a sentence :
"Dear parents, I will be a little late, because ..."
The perfected death to every family !
The hygienic death for future mothers and their babies !
The death,
tiled, white, the final form of the flowing time
And everything in it is strictly divided :
FOR LADIES - FOR GENTLEMEN
But the gentlemen will not come here to perish,
they shave themselves with an exclusive shaver Philips
and drink gin.
An electric bee buzzes next to their ears but gives them no honey.
Why should it ? Their life is sweet enough anyway.
Oh, yes, lovely lady with the mouth like honey, tonight
for your breasts below the neckline
our Hiroshima perfume spray
and your happiness will persist,
tonight,
at the big moment of the 20th century
when the capitalism begins its unique striptease.
It alrady shakes its breasts,
all the California apples roll and ring loudly.
Oh, my beauty, your smile is a blinking neon,
a golden fish in the aquarium,
a rainbow cocktail in your eyes.
Lean back your head towards the stars, another veil falls
like a butterfly, jazz, jazz,
the mass crash of armored fleets.
Pink hips are appearing
Iron muscles of straddled legs,
Oh,
Y,
The known ball above the horns of a bull,
the earth globe in full blossom, happy and fat,
America
dancing like an elephant
on plantations of the world,
America in its nuclear hat,
a bit hysterical sobbing miss.
Uneasy because of that, the world frowns,
America,
do not play with that blouse !
One more button and you will become saint,
you will come alive to the heaven's door
America, burn at four !
Wailed the limousine, the sad moon of mandoline
shone on the land.
America, dance !
America, play !
Midnight.
Miss, we turn off the neon in hair.
Twilight plays it tight right behind the net,
placing all where you do not expect it,
saxophones stick out their tongues,
stretching their burning necks towards the Moon,
they howl their wolfish sorrow.
In the artificial night
artificial stars fall on us.
Sex and bells,
burning cinnabars,
On the fire blade dancing, white, alone,
only the mirrors from all sides
work nervously with passion,
they catch her in every position,
throwing away their sketches just to begin the new.
Everywhere is a plethora of her lips,
of her smiles,
of her hair
her fingers drop down pepper,
her breasts, her calves,
the naked, flexible air,
waves of Atlantic,
fishermen collecting the shells,
high tide, pearls.
And then bump like a gong
like a small, dim sun on the motionless sky,
we realized her belly
perfectly rounded,
the scale of a glittering fish,
the circle of Archimedes,
a disk above the pedestrians' heads.
She touched it with her hands, we saw from the short distance :
It is satiated.
Filled by the slaughterhouses of Chicago,
the slaughterhouses of Laos,
the slaughterhouses of Vietnam
and the slaughterhouses of Malaysia,
it is satiated.
And here the comb of the Moon has broken,
the sky is full with stars,
as if scythed, it foundered down upon the table.
Immediately stood up bank managers,
money forgers
and owners of steel trusts,
as well as archbishops
and automobile kings,
ran away to darkness of ink,
their chins shivered,
their heads burned like furnaces full of coke.
The belly of America was found,
they slap it with their red hands,
they beat it
like box champions,
it is the known rumble,
as if in the centre of the Earth the thunder was born.
And it is a drum,
the belts are jarring,
steel bullets already burrowed into the earth return
to their barrels,
the submarines shift beneath the ice,
riding regiments since the creation of the world saddle their horses,
archaeanic layers ascend to the Earth's surface,
a lightning on the bottom of the sea lifts the weight of the waters,
a snake sizzles like a bottle of fizzy water,
metals oxidize.
A horseshoe burns oils,
wanting to return to the hoof of its horse,
barrels rattle on the cobbled road
and they are drums,
here are their foreheads without a wrinkle,
here they go with their tremendous heads
against thw wall.
Their rhytm is what makes us sleepy,
and behind our head drums beat like a clock,
when we sleep :
Death, death, death.
Oh, drum, the cataract of the sky,
what do you see behind the horizon of blood ?
Oh, drum, the millstone of the world, do not turn so fast,
do not yet sprinkle the flour upon our mothers' heads.
Oh, drum, inside you we are sewn like kittens
and as well silly.
From your leather, drum, we must once cut free,
burn it, fly away
and feel the blow of thunder behind our heels.
*
Short before death I buy a chromed bike
ringing to all sides of the world that you are lovely.
Short before death, but nevertheless in the half of my travel,
like a man who knows he cannot make it to the top of a hill,
but he does not give up nor interrupts his ride
The last competitor is alrady out of his sight for a long time
he has no connection, receives no letters,
He did not fall in love with a brunette behind the window
nor drank from the others' wells.
He feels himself behind him and he escapes
to meet himself he has but himself,
his another form,
which he suspects only dimly,
like an appletree suspects an apple,
like the air suspects a bird.
And maybe it is just the sense of it all,
of that stubborn and hardheaded ride.
But maybe centuries have passed since then and
the world has changed.
We know that :
"The square above the hypotenuse of a right-angled triangle ... etc"
We know that the Earth is round
and love is eternal.
We have discovered America and dynamite.
We have reconstructed the gramophone,
the prototype of the parrot,
the representative of diluvial artistic circles.
We have constructed metaphor and alcohol,
the fuels of the senses,
we have manufactured porcelain
we know how to crush the atomic nuclei.
Stop the rider behind his own shadow !
He is ridiculous to everyone, that blind polisher of the stars,
He is ridiculous to everyone,
with that rainbow above his head
wearing that ancient jersey.
Dogs from the entire planet are biting his calves,
already two thousand years he has been racing in his own blood.
Stop the man,
he lives but
a thousand,
two thousand
a hundred thousand,
it does not matter how many thousands of eye winks.
It is but a gesture,
a snapping of fingers,
a helpless movement of a shoulder.
And all that suffices is pneumonia,
all that suffices is fall down from stairs,
a crazy white horse
and a beat on a drum
- the sun will tear off,
the hot sky will get under your nails,
it will be all.
The man has anyway always a short time before his death,
the man is mortal,
the man lives anyway always with one leg in his grave.
I liked your hair, beautiful Brunhilda,
I wondered about the little star
that was rising among them,
although several centuries have passed since then
and everything is different.
We recognize ourselves in the stretch-faced rider during his turn,
we feel in our legs the steep ascending sharp as a storm,
the hum of bells in our head.
That is the travel which must everyone do in himself
and all in common, on their trajectory.
That is the wonderful perpetuum mobile,
conversion of energy, division of the cells,
infinity of the man,
his blood, his glory.
We have discovered the immortality of life,
we know how to tune the thunder,
we put our hand on the drums' leather
to let it grow over with grass.
In the name of life we call on the dead,
who, even at death, are in their proper place, by their names :
Comrades, listen to the last music,
see how burns the bow on the only string.
It is not tooth-grinding :
"The imperialists are cutting off the branch on which they are sitting. There is no force in the world to stop the progress of mankind ..."
The man is eternal !

Jan Skácel - The ashes

Jan Skácel - The ashes
(Popely)

He wrote with finger to the dust and has not left it
and the wind sings something recently long ago
and at the oil derrick the herd of deer
stood motionless
and fairly listened

What of it is and will not be
that was once written
why speak out loudly that the grass was squeezed
and it raises up
when falls the rain and something else

Who is at least a bit like us
will wait
no really nobody can
lift blades so heavy
And the hand oh lord what another hand

He wrote with finger to the dust and has not left it
and the wind sings something
recently long ago
Such a hand oh lord what another hand
will lift a town and perish in ashes

Miroslav Válek - The autumn

Miroslav Válek - The autumn
(Jeseň)

Go crazy
or drink yourself to death.
Autumn puts her empty hands on your shoulder
and asks for fire,
on the autumn's sleeve sits a mouse
and the autumn prays :
"Don't go away, buy some rubies from me."
You deny, so she will buy you.
And you will not get rid
of those stealthy steps behind you
and of those leavings with no reason - and, by the way, where ?
Even sleeping
you can hear the autumn wind its clock up,
angrily smoothen its velvet,
how it fears to be late ...
The train is whistling,
over the courts
flies the last square root of a bird.
Write it down everything, you silly little calculator :
that you were too lucky,
very afraid
- and all that gold
in your pockets !
Write it all down,
The autumn will count it before it is sold.
The vine-taverns switched off the lights.
Darkness for a half of year.
The spendthrifts
come home with rubies.
Everything is clear :
The trees have anchored,
deep in the clay chains are clashing
the bridge over waters is dry like a wooden chip.
So much weights the unspoken word,
that you begin to fear.
Someone here claps his hands.
From palm to palm
the autumn strews its coins.
The sold children are going to sleep.

Jan Skácel - The teacher of the second death

Jan Skácel - The teacher of the second death
(Učitel druhé smrti)

On a long bench along four whitewashed walls
were sitting the children who had died
only recently
Now they were waiting
for their second death.

They were sitting in well-mannered way and with their little hands in their laps
Totally motionless and so quiet
that behind the open window the chains
of autumn merry-go-rounds were heard

With their little necks they were touching the wall
and were waiting until the teacher came
and were waiting patiently
like never before in their lives

Then steps on the corridor were heard
the teacher entered he came in with no face
as if there was no threshold
and the children greeted him without a word
And because all of them were already after death

no one of them was trembling with fear
They all knew
that once was not enough

Then when he started to call them out by alphabet
they stood up one after another
and after a slight bow
of their hardly fluffed head
with little steps left the classroom

Tiny they were All from the first grade

Miroslav Válek - The wings

Miroslav Válek - The wings
(Krídla)

So it is summer. The blind men in Bahon
are lifting their heads above the wall,
above the barbed wire,
they are watching the trains, long and slim like whistling,
they are ripping the weeds, coughing.
Near Cifer a girl is sunbathing
with her hands above her head,
the heavy derricks of oil industry
are crawling to the railway, all are waving
thinking the same.
According to calendar it is August 15th, Mary,
4 o'clock in the afternoon,
The sun is in beer, the thunderstorm is in the air,
the park is full of lush green, and you are nowhere.
I have been saying you all the time :
Come in the right time,
come when the drums are rumbling,
at high noon,
when the swallows in the air give away their autographs
and the things are silent,
come full of anger,
when you are sad as well as when you would rather laugh.
The heads will be again in the windows, the things in order,
everything will be in its proper place again,
we will make an evening party in your family garden,
I will snap my fingers, the apricots will ignite,
their yellow fires will bend over us :
Then as well the grass was bluish and cold like a well,
the rain, punctuated like a tie, hang obliquely from the clouds,
the lightning started in the sky
and extended as far as our kiss.
When the thunderstorm lasted for too long
and too loudly the metal of thunder was beaten,
you said that they would look for you ...
I saw you fly above the yard in darkness.
During that night the earth moved in its bearings,
all stars were created,
the universe trembled like a lamb
and looked for its centre.
The second day after the world's creation the radio played,
they were walking in the rooms,
they were walking, they were talking,
they were breaking bread,
they were ringing with spoons,
ringing,
but nobody noticed your wings, transparent and light.
We caught you, the blindness of mature age,
we were fine,
and what has happened :
On Saturday after fifteen years
an Abel with whom I used to buy the football tickets
said me that we had lost it all long ago,
we had no wings
and it was a sad thing.
So I am at home,
grasping the land,
the land goes with me everywhere,
my land,
the plain of small people,
workers at Kovosmalt and at the atomic power station,
who represent the god six days a week
on the world's construction so sinfully behind the schedule,
beacause all the saints,
responsible for order, took bribes,
and the god's mills worked only for the rich.
I am at home. Eyes full of land and hands full of hands,
I rise inward myself.
Summer in the air. Summer everywhere.
Summer yellow as a wasp chasing us.
Behind the blood-coloured line of the horizon,
in the god's gardens,
where according to theologians should be the paradise,
where the devil's anger hisses, pomegranates explode
and the angels in gas masks,
burning swords in their hands, close their blind circle,
the destiny of man is written.
But we, since we learned that matter is
only a form of energy,
spread our wings easier,
move as well in space as we do in time
and know that this particular place is here with us,
on the ground.
We have a message for you,
you sweet, supposed, coming from our blood :
Think of us,
we were your destiny,
exactly as you are the destiny of those,
who will come after you to cross
the border line line of life.

And who think the same.

Jan Skácel - The last thirst

Jan Skácel - The last thirst
(Poslední žízeň)

So long ago did we pass away
and so much of thirst
so much of lovely thirst
we did leave at home
It is so long ago
and so many years elapsed since then
It is unbelievable
and all the same after quartzite does taste
and after sulphur
that thirst forever that thirst for the last time

Miroslav Válek - The sensitive

Miroslav Válek - The sensitive
(Citliví)

The mirror should be behind your back,
your hand in a glove,
your leg under the table.
Do not look.
They are hunchbacks,
with one leg shorter,
with one arm ending at the wrist.
They sit, they listen.
From the conversations that do not concern them,
from the words that do not belong to them,
each of them choses a thing for himself,
for instance :
... one should rather have his eyes back ...
... he lives on a high leg ...
... count it on your fingers ...
Oh, why does all the world touch the things that molest us ?
Why must we carry our visible marks,
while the same or even worse deformation of soul
is hidden from everyone ?
After death all of us will have a lovely hunch.

Jan Skácel - Daughters of song

Jan Skácel - Daughters of song
(Dcery písně)

My night is the darkest
where morning begins
and the little birds' horror beneath the windows
starts in full wolume.

Then I get up
And deprived of the previous day
I go to the bathroom.
Going there I am ashamed among my furniture.

Once again I am only myself
robbed to such extent
that to eternity I hang on a thread.
Everything embarrassingly reminds me
that yesterday I was verbatim perpendicular.

Water sets me free for a moment
From the white porcelain with my nail
I scratch out a hair
Too much yours.
It is again bad, even worse.

But then I remember again
and drinking my coffee I recite the verses,
slowly, hardly, to make them sustain :

"On bird-twitter he gets up
and all doughters of song cry."