Tomaž Šalamun [links] Tomaž Šalamun, a poet, born 1941 in Zagreb, divides his time between Ljubljana and United States. "Master contortionist, heliocentric aerialist: Šalamun newest book of poetry is a lard-free must see," says Adam Reich in Book Sense of Feast, Harcourt, 2000, edited by Charles Simic. "One of Europe's great philosophical wonders," says Jorie Graham of The Four Questions of Melancholy, White Pine Press, 1997. The author read from it at The Adelaide Festival, Writers' Week, in 1998. Even today, after he was appointed Cultural Attache with the Slovenian Consulate in New York and later taught as a Visiting Professor of Creative Writing at The University of Massachusetts in Amherst, he still remains in part the enfant terrible he was in the Sixties, when he belonged to the avant-garde and exhibited his work as a conceptual artist at The Museum of Modern Art in New York. His literary traces can be found throughout Europe, while in the United States he is one of the most extensively translated contemporary European poets. His latest book in English, A Ballad for Metka Krašovec, Twisted Spoon Press, appeared in April 2001.

Jonah

how does the sun set?
like snow
what color is the sea?
large
Jonah are you salty?
I'm salty
Jonah are you a flag?
I'm a flag
the fireflies rest now

what are stones like?
green
how do little dogs play?
like flowers
Jonah are you a fish?
I'm a fish
Jonah are you a sea urchin?
I'm a sea urchin
listen to the flow

Jonah is the roe running through the woods
Jonah is the mountain breathing
Jonah is all the houses
have you ever heard such a rainbow?
what is the dew like?
are you asleep?

Translated by Elliot Anderson

Dead Men

dead men, dead men
where in the steppes the birds flit and the day splits in half
where the cube heads are sailboats of whispering and the wagon loads of boards rebound off cliffs
where mornings glitter like the eyes of Slavs
where in the north the beavers slap each other, it resounds as an invitation to death
where the children point to their livid eyes and jump with rage on the timber
where, with their torn-off arms, they scare the bulls belonging to the neighbors
where they stand in line for the cold
where the bread stinks of vinegar, women of wild animals
dead men, dead men
where the tusks flash and fairy tales rustle
where the highest art is to nail the slave in midair
where the corn is burned on the vast plains so that God can smell it
dead men, dead men
where there are special churches for birds to teach them to bear the burdens of their souls
where the inhabitants at every meal snap their braces and step on sacred texts under the table
where the little balls are orange, mothers are nailed onto square shapes
where the horses are black with soot
dead men, dead men
where the skittles are tools of giants bruising their greasy hands on logs
where Šalamun would be greeted with screams
dead men, dead men
where all doormen are yellow men because they blink faster
where meat dealers are beaten to death with rackets and left unburied
where the Danube flows into the movie, from the movie into the sea
where the soldier's bugle is the signal for spring
where souls leap high and whisper in chorus
dead men, dead men
where the reading is strengthened with gravel, to be heard when we strike it, it booms
where the trees have screw threads, the boulevards knee joints
where they cut into children's skin the first day after birth, as into cork trees
where they sell alcohol to the old women
where the youth scrapes his mouth as the dredger scrapes the
bottom of the river
dead men, dead men
where mothers are proud and pluck out filaments from their sons
where the locomotives are covered with elk's blood
dead men, dead men
where the light rots and cracks
where the ministers are dressed in granite
where wizardry causes animals to fall into baskets, the jackals
tread on the eyes of otters
dead men, dead men
where one marks the sides of the sky with the cross
where the wheat is rugged and the cheeks puffed up by fires
where the flocks have eyes of leather
where all waterfalls are of dough, they tie them with black ribbons of young beings
where they break the instep bones of geniuses with timber hooks
dead men, dead men
where photography is limited to plants that grow and blow up the paper
where the plums dry in the lofts and fall in the old songs
where soldiers' mothers wheel the food parcels up to the rack
where the herons are built as athletic Argonauts
dead men, dead men
where sailors come to visit
where in the villas the horses neigh, the travelers smell
where the little bathroom tiles are covered with drawings of iris seeds
where the cannibals are fed wooden shingles
where the vine branches are wrapped in gray veils so that the eyes of the jealous film over

Translated by the author & Anselm Hollo

I Know

Last night, in the water where Barnett Newman's
line disappeared, I drowned. I swam
to the surface, like a black, dark-blue
luminous blossom. It's terrible to be
a flower. The world stopped.
Mute, like velvet, I opened, perhaps
for good.
Before, with Tomaž Brejc, we
talked about the mystique
of finance, about the eye, the triangle,
about God, possible readings
of chance, of Slovenian history and
destiny.
Don't touch me.
I'm the greatest capital just as I am.
I'm the water in which the
destiny of the world takes place for us.
I'm dizzy. I don't understand.
I know.
Tonight, when I made love, I
reported. I'm a black cube now,
like marble or granite-from-the-other-world,
a bird standing, with yellow
feet and an immense yellow beak, my black
feathers shining; now the eminent church
dignitary that is:
they all wanted me,
the blossom.
I'm the pure dark blossom
standing still on the surface.
Untouchable and untouched.
Terrifying.

Translated by the author & Christopher Merrill

[untitled]

if you grab a chicken by its feet
and by its wings and with a sudden movement
turn it on its back and at the same time
slowly press it against the table
it will stiffen in that unnatural position
drift into sleep its feet stretched out
without strength its talons trembling
occasionally and the chicken staying like that
as if tied to the table even if you were
to step aside imperceptibly the chicken
will remain ten or more minutes as if
spellbound

Translated by Charles Simic

Happiness Is Hot, Splattered Brains

Whoever is truly cast in pure love
needs no heaven, let heaven go.
The body blossoms into a terrible silence,
walls and chairs awaken.

Parts of things were once human
members, too. My love,
your warm pressure on my temples
hurts so much.

It pushes me into a sacred circle, shrinking
and expanding. Its massive hand
gives, and then scatters me
into the bone white of night.

We're passers-by here, lost and
helpless. Color, weight and sex
dissolve. My waterfall is hurting. The white
drops remain, awakened into granite.

Only cliché is real. Nostrils
flare. Attacked, destroyed, revered
and licked. Like a stone's white, shiny
parts, which generations and

generations have licked with love.
It was given to them to worship.
To scoot on their knees like bugs.
To groan with the almighty passion of God.

Translated by Michael Biggins

Wounds

I'm scared.
I'm just a stone's throw away from God.
He caresses my nostrils, I know it, caresses me like cocaine.
He's red as a carpet of dawn.
I grab the entrails, too.
Smoke dissolves, soft, greasy.
I turn like a pail.
I am turning in a wheelchair
in the four directions of the world, like Mark's mother.
She's Chinese. The fields were reaped. The trees are
toxic.

Those taverns where the owner stands by the door,
hands in his pockets - sawdust on the floor - and whistles,
do they still exist?
The Knight, for example.
In geologic time the mountains here in San Francisco are old.
They're the youngest. On the altars, as though they have a little
dynamo, Mark's mother, the Chinese, is turning
like a compass. Pages from the book - they're torn out
by skates. So goes the day: if I
were eating handfuls of oats I would not feel anything.
I would not even know I was eating.

Cover me.

Cover me with a hood, grass, sand, rams, keep squeezing
the air out to prevent a tragedy.
Let me feel the beetles on my skin, let me feel them.
Let each of my hairs grow long enough
to hold a movie theater and fog.
Then no one can see who's in there.

Let people make love under the screen,

let each stroke be blunt.
The dice, there's still time, let them evaporate.
Don't let the husks crack.
Let the husks crack.
The shells have silk in their teeth.
In the caves there are cableways, in the cableways
there are dwarves. Do you remember? If not
for your juices I would have evaporated long ago.
You shot me in the forehead.
You sang lullabies of No.

Everything entangled in corn hair rises.
The smoke - the smell calms us down.
You, too, are transparent clay.
An oak tree burns under the pumps.
I seize the iron U on the pier
and draw myself to the shore.
Sun, O my sun,
you're burning me.
If I lose You, I lose Form.

Translated by the author & Christopher Merrill

The Fish

I am a carnivore, but a plant.
I am God and man in one.
I'm a chrysalis. Mankind grows out of me.
My brain is liquefied like
a flower, so I can love better. Sometimes I dip
my fingers in it and it's warm. Nasty people
say others have drowned
in it. Not true. I am a belly
I put up travelers in it.
I have a wife who loves me.
Sometimes I'm afraid she loves me
more than I love her and I get sad and
depressed. My wife breathes like a small
bird. Her body soothes me.
My wife is afraid of other guests.
I say to her, now, now, don't be afraid.
All our guests are a single being, for both of us.
A white match with a blue head has fallen into my
typewriter. My nails are all dirty.
I'm thinking hard now what to write.
One of my neighbors has terribly noisy
children. I am God, I calm them down.
At one I'm going to the dentist, Dr. Mena,
Calle Reloj. I'll ring the bell and ask him
to pull my tooth, because it hurts too much.
I'm happiest in my sleep and when I write.
The masters pass me along from hand to hand.
That's essential. It's just as essential as
growing is for trees. A tree needs earth.
I need earth so I won't go mad.
I'll live four hundred and fifty years.
Tarzs Rebazar has been alive six hundred.
I don't know if that was him in the white coat,
I still can't make them out. When I write I have
a different bed. Sometimes I start pouring out more like
water, because water is most loving of all.
Fear injures people. A flower is softest
if you close your hand around it. Flowers like
hands. I like everything. Last night I
dreamed my father leaned across toward
Harriet. Other women frighten me, and
so I don't sleep with them. But the distance between
God and young people is slight.
There's always just a single woman in God, and that's
my wife. I'm not afraid of my guests tearing
me apart. I can give them anything, it will just grow back.
The more I give, the more it grows back. Then it launches off
as a source of help for other creatures. On some planet
there's a central storehouse for my flesh. I don't know
which one it's on. Whoever drinks it will
be happy I'm a water hose. I'm God, because
I love. Everything dark in here, inside, nothing
outside. I can X-ray any creature.
I'm rumbling. When I hear the juices in my
body, I know I'm in a state of grace. I would have to
consume money day and night if I wanted to
build a life, and still it wouldn't help. I was made to
shine. Money is death. I'll go out on the terrace.
From there I can see the whole countryside as far as Dolores
Hidalgo. It's warm and soft as Tuscany,
though it's not Tuscany. Metka and I sit there,
watching. Her hands are like Shakti's.
My mouth is like some Egyptian beast's. Love is
all. Moses's wicker basket never
struck the rocks. Miniature horses come
trotting out of the level countryside. A wind blows
from the Sierras. I slide headfirst into people's
mouths and kill and give birth,
kill and give birth, because I write.

Translated by Michael Biggins

To a Golem

Lost in thought,
you came to watch me.
I'm like an olive branch - your face.
Houses are on fire in the sun.
The bridge is pasted together stone by stone
and the sky keeps gnawing.
The hands are seizing me.
I hear the motion of soft nibs.
Smoke rises out of me.
I evaporate into you, tasting your
fruit, passer-by.
The sheep scratches herself on the rock,
the windows are wiped in a dream.
Sweet rehearsing pours over me.
I'm folding your door latches.
I shuck the black, silky
festive hall of your warm breath,
the impermanence of your life.

Translated by Charles Simic