Tomaž Šalamun

To stop the blood of flowers and to reverse harmony. To die in the river, to die in the river. To hear the heart of a rat. There is no difference between the silver of the moon and the silver of my tribe. To clear the field and to run to the edge of the earth. To bear a crystal in the chest: the word. Soap evaporates at the door, fire illuminates the day. To look back, to look back one more time. And to remove the robe. The poppy has bitten the sky. To walk empty roads and drink shadows. To feel the oak at the mouth of the well. To stop the blood of flowers, to stop the blood of flowers. Altars watch each other face to face. To lie down on a blue cabbage. Translated from the Slovenian

Three flies, woken by the sun on a white, illuminated wall, leap like the hands of a florist wrapping bouquets. They remind me of a knife thrower, who performs with five in the air. Is the quantity restricted? Catch and don’t think. Weigh me. I’ll run away from you like water and press you like ice if you sizzle too much. Look at them on the white wall. Three trees from the new shoots of a cedar. From the corner of a cube. And, if you look closely, from a gully. Translated from the Slovenian

I’m religious. As religious as the wind or scissors. It’s an ant, she’s religious, the flowers are red. I don’t want to die. I don’t care if I die now. I’m more religious than the dust in the desert. The mouth of a child is round. My eyes are syrup, dripping cold. Sometimes I think I baked nettles, but I didn’t. Sometimes I think I’m miserable, but I’m not. I’m religious. I will throw a barrel into the river. If bees rushed into my face, I’d scratch at them with my hand and would see again. I don’t get upset. The soul presses like the crowds at the door. When I die, oxen will graze the grass just like this. Houses will glimmer just like this. Translated from the Slovenian

The rise of the zebra hurts the zebra. As if she would breathe fire. If  we put natural gold and the black blue into the loaf of  bread it bursts. Find and shove, open and wound. The oars when kneaded in and then stretched, row. How they bump into wheat on the white surface again. Mašenka! There are three corpses in Gravel Cave. One keeps silent. One snowballs. One conceals.

Lucretius grabbed my arm and led me to the spot where he went nuts. I watered little drums right away and entangled the Sava River with knitting needles. I putrefied a small soup, dismembered seven towels. There, He — The Terrible — burnt on the stake, squatted, too. My god, I beat him up his ass. Puff, puff, but no one had heard a thing. Now here, I’m flooded with flowers by cumin. Even Tarkovsky appears. Now I will suck you with my thumbs, mold you like clay with my horns, till he’d vaporize and see into what and where I’ve traveled to. Into honor. Into white birch trees. Into the pouch used for bread. I hung around the world a lot, frothily crushing the mountain range. With no avail, with no day’s pay, sticky are my laws. I protected an elephant as much as I could, stared at the back of the horse. Joshed the others now, too, tested spring mattresses. Kept gulping nirvana. Loosened feathery leaves, wrapped the emperor into a roll. To not let my senses perish, to gallop without a break.

The insane devotee throbs with his small legs, I don’t dare more. The insane devotee throbs with his small legs, I cannot do more. Bricks are yellow, made of polyvinyl, fattish. We people die.Lemme aks you, no l’s no r’s from the Japanese and Chinese, only the white mushroom, a cataract. Animals are prolific. You come from the valley, from your spine. From something more? From the risen sun. To smoke oneself on the roof. To change clothes and dry one’s hair in water lily.

Historical brutality, you are a poppy. With a black scepter, silk wings. I see everything: the field of dew and castles’ wedding parties. Enchant me then, rabble, the leaves are opening. Drink me like wine, say moooo. Translated from the Slovenian

Yeah. It’s only a matter of environment if I’m a genius. A genius is kohlrabi in a turnip in kale in cellophane in the freezer. In files they descend on the white skin and converge in the corner’s follicles. The ants are illuminated. Basta. Translated from the Slovenian

One finger is the tundra, one finger is the Bodhisattva, one finger is mother Slovenia. Two fingers still remain, beckoning and with awful force feeding me seventeen hands with this arrangement. Alone, I’m alone on the roof of the world and drawing so stars are created. I’m spurting through the nose so the Milky Way is created and I’m eating so shit is created, and falling on you and it is music. I am God. I am God and I’m dancing. This table is a gift, this house is a gift, this garden is a gift, these squirrels are a gift. These human legs are murmuring mantras. Alone, alone. Glug glug glug I drink gulps of light and I brush. So I shower and put myself back, alone. I alone am the center of the world’s light, the Lord’s lamb. I alone am all animals: a tiger, an ant, a deer, a rabbit, a porcupine (a hedgehog), a butterfly, an insect, a piranha, a baby rabbit, a daddy rabbit, the god of ferrets, the straw hat of a sketched puppy and his paws. I alone am all plants: strawberries, birch, hazel, pumpkin, fern, dandelion,juves(juves is a plant with thin roots, resembling the roots of parsley, but it has a nose and head like a porcini cap and one birch’s hand, sitting all day in a race car like a liana), maple, oak, corn, alone. I alone am all the people named in this book and all the others: Joe, Janet, Agatha, Veronika, Boris, Ivan, Italo, Pierre, alone. I alone am the air, smoothly, the lining, two parallel tracks, pot(to sweat),pot(the road), the cause, the forceps, Lope de Vega, the streak, the dot on the forehead, the dot in the air, alone. Alone, I alone am the air and the golden butter, linden bark, the king, the sickle and hammer, the Dalmatian, the saw, Armenia, the key, alone. Translated from the Slovenian