DEATH'S  ANGEL

He comes across the granite yard,
Grizzled feather glint in his black wings.
He strokes the tree, the water and the cat,
Glances at the mirror of the day.

And the pond shivers though the wind has stilled,
And the cat on the doorsill attacks the air
Like a mouse. The tree's blood begins to jell,
Day falls in stains on the brown grass.

The hundred year old oak door
Screeches like a newborn. Through yellow fog
The patient's eyes see: rainbows
Slump to earth like cackling parrots.

The clock counts out the time for the living,
A spider hangs his web among the stars,
And the angel, having entered the hearth,
Turns into smoke, ashes, embers.

Translated by Jonas Zdanys


HOT DAY

A thin cypress scrapes the sky,
And the hot day's perfume
Pours itself on the landscape's wounds.
Delicate needles pierce the heart;
Fainting she smiles and hears
Her own screams but cannot die,
The way you and I cannot.

She hears: a metal bird sings
In a glass tree, copper fruits trundle,
Tremble in the dizziness of dying.
Toward an old faun's golden foot
Soft music swims.

Having merged with the glass tree's invisible buds
You don't care if tomorrow ever comes.

Translated by Jonas Zdanys


SUNDAY

In a room dead for twenty years
An old woman's shadow yawns, turns an empty
Coffee grinder, the clock shows Sunday,
The cuckoo quiets, a guest is stabbed in the inn.

A sleeping woman reads a scorched book:
The Terrible History of the Demon Belphegor.
In her palms are Saturn's broken lines.
The double walls are filled with ducats and bones.

An anemic voice runs up the cellar stairs,
Coloratura dripping candles and tears.
The wall rips, the rubber girl falls,
Violins carry the bloody heart out to the garden.

A giant laughing maple knocks at the ruddy
Coffin decorated with flutes and fioritura.
Poveri fiori. Poisoned violets faint.
The shadow of the voice runs to the vanished house.

Translated by Jonas Zdanys


MIDDAY

Crying out that he had no soul
He jumped to earth from the crooked tower.
Beneath him lakes glittered with coins
And grass fed on bubbles of milk.

The flying shadow shouted with joy.
The grey air didn't hear the screams.
The king's dogs chased a happy fawn,
Red orchards choked with apples.

A legless Italian angel crawled along
Dragging a large bag of metal birds
For orphans. Shadows of sweet-flags
On the riverbank said to the shell beauty:
"Why do you hide your lips and eyes?"

Translated by Jonas Zdanys


HARBOR

Locked up in a midday hard as diamond
My eyes begin to fail.
The shore is charged with a fierce light:
A holiday of nails, broken glass, daggers,-
Who will give me a helping hand?

And steamer and locomotive
Sirens carve the rippled air,
And crabs and lobsters crawl
Between fishermen's stone hands,
And a crowd of screaming blacks
Pierces me like knives.

The shore is charged with a hot light.
Who will cover the fire of clouds,
Help me to wait for the cold night?
A holiday of lightning, flames, embers.

And the ocean rocks with boats
And glitters with crooked mirrors.

Translated by Jonas Zdanys


* * *

Through the hospital window chloroform
Flows from a broken bottle
Into evening's garden,
And a poplar's feet fall asleep
And his hands get lost in dreams.

And petals of wild rose buds
Chase air like fish,-
A bush winces and staggers.
Grabs with its branches at a low
Cloud, and collapses.

And the nightingale can't
Count to three:
The melody melts on the third trill,
Falls into a yellow pond,
And suddenly the whole garden lights up:

I burn like a funeral candle
Near my hanging coffin
And swim into the bottomless box.
And the weathervane in the tower
Tosses terrified and squeaks prayers
To chase away the chloroform
From the rose, the nightingale, the poplar,
And, not remembering my name,
It hysterically turns and whines
And chokes.

Translated by Jonas Zdanys


* * *

A wind blows from the pyramids,
From kings and from castles,
From churches slender as spears,
From corpulent baroque flowers.

O, how pretty is History!

Heads of paint die in frames.
Letters pray on stones.
The smell of withering roses trembles.
The echo of war songs melts.

History smells like a mortuary!

A powerful man rules the country.
Black slaves turn grindstones.
Blood flows, poison and wine,
A sword rings, and money.

I tremble reading History.

And the old whore Clio,
Seller of used truth,
Fears neither poison nor swords
But only the light of the sun.

Translated by Jonas Zdanys


THE WINTER'S TALE

Guess what smells so... You didn't guess.
Lilies? Lindens? No. Winds? No.
But princes and barbers smell so,
The evening smells so, in a dream.

Look: a line goes through the glass
Bending quietly; and the hushed
Light, in the tender mist,
Is gurgling like a brook of milk.

Look: it's snowing, it's snowing, it's snowing.
Look: the white orchards is falling asleep.
The earth has sunk into the past.
Guess who's coming... You didn't guess.
Princes and barbers are coming,
White kings and bakers,
And the trees murmur, covered with snow.

Translated by Randall Jarrell


ARROW IN THE SKY

I am an arrow that a child shot through
An apple tree in bloom beside the sea;
A cloud of apple blossoms, like a swan,
Has shimmered down and landed on a wave;
The child is wondering, he cannot tell
   The blossoms from the foam.

I am an arrow that a hunter shot
To hit an eagle that was flying by;
For all his strength and youth, he missed the bird,
Wounding instead the old enormous sun
And flooding all the twilight with its blood;
   And now the day has died.

I am an arrow that was shot at night
By a crazed soldier from a fort besieged
To plead for help from mighty heaven, but
Not having spotted God, the arrow still
Wanders among the frigid constellations,
   Not daring to return.

Translated by Theodore Melnechuk


APOLLO

His profile, grave and fine, can sever
Like sharpest sword. Do you not hear?
Apollo passed this way. For ever
The echo of his lire - as clear

And crystalline as glass - resounds
Through all our hushed and chambered space,
And here still, in the cruel bounds
Of night - the frozen marble face!
And I must sing the tired old lays
Of men beyond their earthbound ways.

The sky is crossed by swallow routes,
The heath is gay with dancing flutes,
And on that scene the sun bestows
The flush that women wear, the rose.
And I must sing the age-old lays
Of men beyond their earthbound ways.

Translated by Astrid Ivask


MUSE

The dressmaker muse from Denis's painting
Puts her sewing on the bench, rises,
Walks down an empty street of summer
Yellowed like a Chinese face.
The checkered dress begins to climb the stairs,
And beneath her feet an oak voice
Scans running words into iambs.

She goes through the heavy sleeping door
Like the wind and suddenly
Grows like a statue in the room.
Seeing the blind stone face
The children scream and start to run,
But she throws the children out the window,
And the geranium and the canary,
And the infants, flapping their wings,
Set down like angels in the square.
The flower sings in the street like a bird
And the canary sprouts
A bright yellow blossom. And the stone
Hands the man a pen and a notebook
And languidly begins to dictate.

Translated by Jonas Zdanys


STORM IN THE HILLS

Thunder fell. Winds gather
Dancers running in the hills.
The young branch in my hand
Turns suddenly to ash.
A black echo knocks about in the abyss.
The star is blind, the star is old.
Dryad's feet in the tree's hands
Flame with a blue flame.

Translated by Jonas Zdanys


WINTER AND SUMMER

Everything was so warm and round:
Heaven and the sun, pears and grapes,
And the breasts of a young girl
Who waited for love in the shade of a cloud.

Autumn crushed the weeping grapes,
Winter strewed the fields with lime,
And the sun, dead bird of paradise,
Falls through my window like a stone.

Translated by Jonas Zdanys


A MECHANICAL ANGEL

A mechanical angel's duties are not difficult:
Govern lightning bolts, bring bread and wine,
Watch through the window how flames climb the walls,
Talk with street lamps about old times.

A mechanical angel's duties are not difficult:
Feed chimeras in the tower every hundred years,
Step softly so the metal will not clang,
Cloak freezing caryatids with fog.

A mechanical angel's duties are difficult:
Blocade the door, do not let Death in,
And if she enters, show her a sleeping brother
And convince her he doesn't have a soul.

Translated by Jonas Zdanys


PETRIFICATION

I don't know, a girl or a column -
I couldn't tell in the dark,
But I felt the thin waist
And heard the dead heart.

A pigeon descended from heaven,
Squatted on the dead hand,
Turned to stone, and frightened
Saw how waves of marble
Were pouring over space and time
And that God himself couldn't stop them.

Translated by Jonas Zdanys


WAR YEARS

Soldiers and cows march down the road.
Red sunset shines through dust.
Birds flew by above the green willow,
Flowers by the path, delicate and yellow.

I stand on a hill, watch and keep still,
And the sun laughs, having covered everything
With blood, and cannons roll down the road,
And battalions sing, and guns glitter.

Translated by Jonas Zdanys


EVENING DAWN

A young dancer lies near the heart
Of the hoary world. A phonograph
Scratches through a finished record
Rustling like the wind. And the dawn,
Swimming through the window's cold glass,
Timidly reflects itself in a mirror
And, dimming in the lacquered table,
Sees a darkening engraving on the wall:
A narrow-eyed Japanese courtesan
Whose dress blossoms with chrysanthemums
And behind whose back from a yellow mist
A rootless tree grows in the heavens.

Translated by Jonas Zdanys


TWILIGHTS

A paled evening, turning to fog,
Seeps from a quiet sky into the garden
Through a green leaf glass, rustles in the grass
Where in weeping light the whitest beasts,
Leaving behind their stories, wander in reality,
Fearing that soon the boundless arches of the sky
Will dim, and their hides, bubbling, will melt,
And divine hands will not shear off their wool.

Translated by Jonas Zdanys


OPHELIA

When I was a child
I did not want to learn to swim.
I cried,
Bit my nurse's hand.

When the prince pushed me away,
I dived,
Wouldn't have come up,
But now -
I float on my back
Between the clouds and grass,
Sing out of boredom.

The morning's cold.
The stone philosopher said:
The universe is cooling,
The cold will kill God.

Singing at night
I floated by a gipsy fire.
They ran to the river
Dancing,
Picked up the melody, 
Added a chorus.

The curent's strong.
I'll never reach the bank.
I can already hear the sea.

I hope my teacher was right:
That earth is really round.
And in several years,
Adorned with crystals of salt,
I'll return by water to Elsinore.

If the gypsies were telling the truth,
That the prince died poisoned,
I'll forget I can swim
And jump into the river.

Translated by Jonas Zdanys


HUMMINGBIRD

A piece of dandelion down,
A microscopic apparition,
Flew
Into a rainbow.
Out flew
Mottled fog,
A gram of the sun's spectrum,
Not bird,
Not bee,
But wind
Wafting the fragrance
Of flowers.

Translated by Jonas Zdanys


AUTUMN IN THE PARK

A fierce suicidal autumn
Makes noble statues weep
And the water of their tears
Flows into black marble goblets.

And you live like an echo,
Like a voice floating afar.
You see a silent procession of snails
Reflected in the water.

The distance is blue with cold,
The clay is red as a dead leaf.

Translated by Jonas Zdanys


THREE LINES

The two-headed black man - an animal
(The old man is sad and the lion fierce)
With cold orange eyes looked
At sun-flamed old trees
From which flying flames
Rose to heaven like a song. Beneath them
A crowd laughed, drank and traded
Weapons and pots, love and horses.
    He wrote the first line.

The crazed prophet with a cruel beard
That thundered like Vulcan's hammer -
Raising his hands above the panicked earth
(The palms's shadows - large spiders -
Crawled over the heads of cows and people)-
Began to shout that the nation's end
Was nearing, that the thread of holiest wool
Dropped at night into clear waves
Showed in a convex silver mirror:
A throng of demons pours to earth:
Leviathan, Essas, Asmodeus,
Baal, Botis, Pruflas, Abbadon,
Agares and Mercurius quadratus
Will burn the town in a howling fire.
    He wrote the second line.

Like the remnants of a massacred army
Years traveled through time's desert,
The moon's belly waxed and waned,
Trees outside the windows flew to heaven.
Fires and plague hewed the town,
Gods ran screaming to the woods,
In an empty house, the kingdom of shadows,
    He wrote the third line.

Translated by Jonas Zdanys


DREAM

I dreamt a landscape like El Greco:
In the heavens, in a green glass cloud,
A hill was reflected and a light
Current of lightning - and there was nothing

That could separate earth from heaven. Hills
And rivers are reflected in me like that,
And a bird rocks perched on a branch
And clear fish swim in the waters

Of my soul. I walk through paradise
And repeat the songs of angels.

Translated by Jonas Zdanys


SALESGIRL

Tears flow down the girl's face:
Loved, promised, doesn't write.
Summer can't be brought back
And she wrings her hands on the counter.

Castles collapsed, stories died.
The town is flooded with fall.
And in the store - ropes, horseshoes,
And nails, nails, nails, nails.

Translated by Jonas Zdanys


CONVERSATIONS OF DOGS

Through darkening telegraph poles
At the crossroads, near grey piles of gravel,
I see frail farmsteads scattered
Against the dimmed autumn background.

Beyond the highway, beyond the falling birches,
A shepherd's voice in the marsh throbs among
  ferns.
Rain drips slowly
From horses's manes.

In the woods woodpecker knocks don't knock.
Evening fell beyond the clouds.
Things died out.
It's dark.

Who threw me into this darkness?
I walk splashing invisible puddles.
Somewhere far off, beyond the horizon,
Conversations of dogs.

Translated by Jonas Zdanys


THE BUTCHER SHOP

Oh beauty with weary arms in the pitying neon
  light
That pours like death moans on your hair,
Oh beauty with weary arms, screams congealed
  on your fingers,
Bellows died in echoes among the naked autumn
  trees.

Corinthian columns rise with the gulls in the
  plaster sky
Where frescoed Europa swims on the bull in heavy
  seas,
Apollo stares at a mirror with eyes of stone
And on the marble table meat blossoms like a
  delicate rose.

Translated by Jonas Zdanys


STATUE

The birds come closer.
I can't catch them.
Fog and smoke carry them.
I can't bend
And catch the fish in the fountain.
I'll go hungry again tonight.

I can't lie down -
A thousand pounds of bronze -
From a distance at midday
You can see my green body
Through pigeon wings.

I, Giovanni Cortona,
Blacksmith and Renaissance god,
Am four hundred years old.
My brothers and sisters
Died of the plague in one week.
Soldiers murdered my father.
Crows circled the rooftops.
My mother drowned herself.

War, famine, plague.
I stood
Naked all winter.
The sculptor didn't light a fire,
Give me food.

Eternal, forever twenty,
The ruler of the plaza.
Spreading stains scream in the street.
Schoolgirls giggle at my nakedness.
Englishmen, Brazilians, Japanese snap my picture.

Green as pond scum in summer.

There's rumbling in the turbid sky.
It's beginning to snow.
At dawn the town
Will blend with the hills - a ghostly vision.

A freezing blacksmith and Renaissance god.
The ruler of a hidden town.

Translated by Jonas Zdanys


VISITOR FROM THE MOON

He descended from heaven on a rope
Into a king's palace. The straw roof,
Wanting to block the thief's path,
Began to burn.
	      Running to the pond
He began to ladle water. Suddenly
A swan started to sing and woke up the house.

He cut off the reflection's head, jumped
On the roof, put out the straw. The blind
King began to wake the queen
Who lay in a demon's embrace
Dreaming that she enters heaven
And God gives her vings. The thief
Ordered the king to show him his crowns.
No one told where the crowns were.

He nailed the king to the floor,
Drowned the demon in the pond,
And hung the queen near a mirror.

No one told where the crowns were.
He spilled gas on the roof,
And fire began to sing and dance
Like a drunken beggar.
	      And he, jumping
On a motorcycle, flew off to heaven.
Just then, having lingered all night,
The eclipse of the moon ended.

Translated by Jonas Zdanys


THE RETURN

It began to rain, and the night grew wet
And smelled of fish and empty places,
And you took away
The radiance of the green leaf.

And you were left with that greenness,
A dog red as the sunset,
Slow-passing time, grey smoke,
And a hilltop thick with clouds.

If lost, you sometimes sleep
In the desert, beneath the brutal sun,
You'll be able to return to the shade
Of the tree glimmering on the lake.
You'll see the darkening banks -
Where fishermen drag the moon -
And the shadow of the dog who understands
Your destination all these years.

Having kept your promise,
You'll hear the raindrops fall -
And you'll stand like Odysseus,
Unsure of your return.

Translated by Jonas Zdanys