Overwintering

The body is running down

The body is running down, drum beats
behind a dozen curtains
the clash of shield on shield
from time to time even lancers appear

I don't keep a look out for heavily-pleated robes

Mounted messengers, porters, gate-keepers?
Why this urgent rhythm?
Why this dull thudding?
Why this desertion
from rabbit-hutch to a passage
wide enough for a team of four?

Little hope of answers
but the spirit is defiant

(2003)



From Pre-Departure

And this is the time of utter solitude. The lava is cold, new night devoid of dream.

Beneath the window, the chanting herd is on the march. A threateningsign of autumn! Heads filled with barbed wire are swaying, there's noneed for them, the idea is turning into a place for monsters. (The oldwoman in the fairy-tale, with her cane and bent back, is collectingleaves into a balloon-like basket; at noon she flies off and the colourof the sky didn't find a more peaceful hue. At the edge of theimpressionistic forest were left a number of bulky sacks reeking ofdecay and lime.)

It's lunchtime and suddenly I know: it wasn't a night without adream. The dream was called "Theatre of Pus", and was long and simple.It's my first encounter with these symbols:

"A friend (I can't say which one, perhaps rather: all of them in oneperson) stands on the dais and displays his innumerable suppuratingwounds. With utter cynicism, he tears off the filthy bandages andbloody scabs. The pus runs. Smiling, he squeezes a big ulcer on hischest. We're fascinated and await something frightful."

It seems a lot of shouting is building up right now, which wants topromote a new ox-cart. "It's the year 1943. Take yourselves off indroves to Switzerland! Don't forget your poems and your paintings! Thefolding harmonium! Take an active part in the building of new DADA!Long live tragic Dadaism! The year 1943 is for its founder! Long livethe year 1943! We cheer civilization, whose sole unrecognized peak weare! The vital sensation named tragic dada grows from day to day! To aman, we'll all be there on the big evening of tragic dadaism, when newtheory and practice will be clarified! Knight-bearers of the chivalrouscross have vowed to take part! Long live the year 1943! Long live newtragic dada!" Yes, it was right now that the floodgates opened, thegirl with the blond hair eventually came and it wasn't difficult toleave this fractured scene barely taking shape from the glowing core.Even if this didn't become a mere farewell gesture, even if there wasneed to cross over frost-bound ground, the password of tragic dadaism,overheard from an uncertain distance, from a dream, from loneliness,from longing or disillusion, it did enable me to blow up this awkwardbridge. (And at that moment the dynamite is already in place on one'schest.) Goodbye, my three blue days that stick out in my mind, I'mgoing to seek softer and more erotic hues, more luminous shades ...

(7-31.10.1943)                                                      (Napospas (1999))



Thoughts up the chimney

... Surveyor K. and confidential clerk Josef K., whether we like ornot, gc with a gang of assistants like variants of Hamlet in thiscentury and ask irritating questions without even pressing for a firmreply. And we need only repeat, with the salesman, what was said toconfidential clerk Josef K.: "Youi trial is six months old, isn't it?Yes, I've heard about it. It's still early days!"

What would happen to a person if he wouldn't fight his nation whoselanguage he was given to speak, and who wouldn't swear at it and seekto shed its skin. Everyone probably says to himself: "What if I wereborn, for instance, an Eskimo or a Patagonian, I wonder what it wouldbe like?" Fantasy goes full stretch. And nostalgia too and profoundsadness and woes, because cries are such as to be alreadysupra-national.

But we also have the taste for mocking, a longing to do grotesquethings, a desire to play the fool or do something crazy, who knows howit all fits in, we have the taste for mixing trivia with atongue-lashing, a longing to shock, a desire to entertain, even toscare, who knows how it fits in ...

(1965)
(Napospas)



At the end of summer

I come across a tortoise
Cold sandy
Darkness

I see the horizon
A spider's thread couch-grass a hair

I hear a thin menacing whistling
Razor dagger knife

Does the tortoise see the horizon?
Does the tortoise hear a menacing whistling?

Sand shifts
Spiders weave
Couch-grass rustles

Hair, knife?

I hear autumn
The tortoise senses the darkness

(1968)



Winter solstice

They asked the morello
when it most felt the cold,
to which it replied:
"On the night of the solstice."

They asked the rose
what crushed its root,
and it whispered:
"The day before Adam and Eve."

They asked the wolf
when the winter was at its hardest,
and it said:
"When the sun is born."

(1979)