Miloslav Topinka: Crack | Reading

Lumps of clay…

Lumps of clay which hardly hold together.
Flight of a bird, fall of a leaf from a tree.

Field or no field, thorn or no thorn,
I take a stone, and there away it goes!

Birds soar over, cleaving space,
Their flight curves groove the sky.

Sky charged with the energy of the curves of absent birds.

At dusk I scatter ashes about the bed,
at dawn, as I awake, my eyes impatiently search
for traces, like the traces of birds.
Rifts in space.

BRIDGES – PENETRATIONS 

Universe / wasps’ nest.
Honeycombs of galaxies, honeycombs of emptiness merging.

Universe as a thin, pliable sail, which bends beneath the weight of matter. 
Sail with a hollowed-out depression.

Riddled sail of the universe,
                 of space,
                 of darkness.

/ TRANSFORMATION /

Human transformation, and bodily transformation.
Process of awakening. Transformation of perception.

It is only a moment. One touches upon those
uttermost boundaries. The horizon. Has a new skin,
a new body.

Body / star. Translucent outlines.
Form dependent upon attraction, pressure on a body
/ under higher pressure would be more constricted, confined
in a shell, into a spiral /.

Strange tension, gripping of space.
Passageway through tunnel / through death.
Fall through blue and pink-tinged sky.
Suddently all goes silent. Only spindles, or rather swirls of light.

AUBADE

In the tree’s hollow a sack of dark
in branches a raven’s nest
and crack! the canvas rips
day is about to break
Red sky softly on the palm
star so close

Light hatches across the jute-cloth sky
punctures the crevice of lips
the egg-shell bursts
speech tingles between the fingers
Space is deaf
swallows the dark 

/ Which the one I’ll give /

From morn to morn I await the ravens’ arrival
They come in flight
They gleam
A star is frozen over

You touch I touch
slowly I grow accustomed
to the emptiness

Here and there snow crunches

In the gloaming
Skin gleaming
between the wings
light rustles

You grow awake
You dissolve
the darkness on the tongue
just like that
out of habit

A handful of light
trickles
between the fingers

Knees close up
Eyes deep down

First the eyes, the lips, the palms
Eyes a little nearer

A ray of light between the breasts
slides across the tongue
dissolves the lips

I swallow
till I gulp
I penetrate further
down, deep down
as deep as deep can be

Beneath the skin, behind the skin, the eyes, right through

D’you hear? Again that crunch
The wings of ravens
ruptured the sky

Sharp light

Then nothing more

Then nothing more