Petr Král's reading at PWF2008

Memory of a Poem-Excursion

One of my most successful poems concerned my striking dislike for poetry
in the poem I only went to be sick upon the poets' graves
the poem even predicted explicitly the result of someone finding out
how they would drag me out of the text and leave it uninhabited
at least until they sent me to Jilemnice in place of my poet friend Šebek
sending him here to Strašnice to finish off my work
meanwhile in the poem something’s naturally altered the word shit is replaced
by the word violin the word coffeehouse by barracks
pleasure by the word castration the word back-side by book
the word book by sausage
even the word egg by egg
the word morass already itself so debt-laden rapidly collapses into itself
becoming scarcely recognisable
bent over the word mirror
itself replaced by the word shit

Disgustedly I turned away from shit I grabbed a sausage
and began to read
too late
the sausage was left in the stubble of last year's autumn
in vain I awaited the coming of July and still surrounded by Jilemnice
likewise the letters of my name had been replaced by others
I walked about here but recognised nothing
I tried to describe at least those some I met in the sunlight
in the middle of the square their shrill distinguished hats
the burgeoning gravestones on their heads
I bashed away at the typewriter keys with all my might
in vain
the word square remained quite desolate

I bash out finally midnight
but read: and at noon I only see myself once more as I obstinately
fidget at the beginning
fidget and haplessly gaze as in place of the existing noon
abruptly intrudes itself the old familiar word unhappiness


Translated by Jim Naughton




The Last White Man

for Jean-Claude Silbermann


When a Sunday finally passes and history is happily behind us
come by some lengthy detour
to mist my glazed door over with your breath
on the other side of which for inborn loss of memory
I am now long gone
come to read the message standing here
whilst I at the other end of the world
will carefully be wiping - or not wiping - the final gleaming bend
come to forgive me
all I never did to you
and give me lasting quittance
Someone will anyway be found for you to meet in my stead another
anonymous murderer of yours
whom you will miss in the crowd
the final shred of blood vanishes in the sleeve of the wind
even before you place your finger in its button-hole

The heather of years grows burgeoning as always on another river quayside
on a further person’s heels
Irrespective of all decrees on calm or gusting breeze
THERE IS SILENCE
all one need do is swallow the gag forgo the superfluous speech

The fingerprints are buried in the soundless white of marble
and empty mirrors likewise
lose their appetite for laughter

Translated by Jim Naughton



Monday, change trains

The tobacco of old ladies horked on the sidewalk
right next to the night's unchewed leftovers  The sun rigid in
the vice of fear
has just that icy drop hanging from its nose
between our legs
To at least be our own uncle like in the old joke for book-lovers
of course far-off Texas snickers the more
the more I go through his faded pockets
the church crawls up the stairs from sleep to the cleaner's
and in the desert of today's proletariat nothing breaks out but maybe the long past smell
of vanilla

Even better to tumble out of the forest with fingers stamped with strawberries
remain standing in front of the rails and cleanly in spirit to start cutting into slices
the soaked railway tracks

Meanwhile outside the street is clanging with banged-out sideboards
the day is still stuck in the wings of fog like the stench of dead organs



Into the Night

It’s too late, and it’s no good flashing your eye and driving your belly
in the tango between the stiffening limbs of the one that is backing off with you
out of time; it’s no good neatly parting your mop and starting to rant
from the balcony over the leavings of sunlight in the bay.
It’s too late, the grinning gob that is gaping into the night
can’t hide the bottomless pit.

Of time to live
there was plenty, the whole afternoon, when the wind raised the tablecloth
on the terrace
and taught it oblivion
when a faint gleam cut through the grey of the river embankment
to the white of nowhere,
and the counted seed lurked in the dark of the shop while out on the street an unknown goddess
passed on her bike.
All the time to live in the fleeting ripple of the world
without weight, while you yet slept.



Translated by Jim Naughton



Talent of the 1940 generation

Hear
what is singing from us

UNRRA cans fredo
ledo from coloured water
tuxedo in father's closet
and a street confidant

a whole choir of confidants with watchful
gazes
the sweat of fellow gymnasts
escapes to the suburbs

in German and Russian
the tanks resound in us
birds only in the crack of mornings after a binge
walls of Atlantis with posters

memorable tufts in the armpit
and the embrace of statesmen
cognacs and small shots of rum
inserted into the breaks in history

also the tremble of ghosts from old slapsticks
and the suddenly haughty smile of those in East German shirts
Expo too promising a sphere
Miles is slurping in us Elvis is sobbing

Bill Evans sounds out playing alone
our fumbling
the night bass buzzes thick black
clumps fall from the universe

the Scout's Turk's head knot sings from us
and a stripped Kandahar binding
faith in the big city dazzle in menthol
of ladies under a flared skirt

the panic of proletarians fallen from the train
the next paradise caught on the counters of consumption
gasoline and taffeta
an orgy under the yolka

the fuckish pioneer girls the decaying madams
the mad seer-women of the central committees
the clatter of trams and executions
in the dull daybreak

the abruptness of the brick facades of firehall
staircases behind the beatnik ravings
the abrupt nausea under fireworks
as well as the salves of Hendrix's guitars

the lopsided stage sings
in the reeds and late jaunts for abortions
the summer Technicolor of massacres on the highways
bearded avantgardists sticky juices

good-as-new patent-leather shoes fresh cowboy shirts
the cool of star fields all at once
behind the news about bases in Cuba
the rustle of grass in the deteriorating little fort

the casual elegance of Jews of threadbare carpets
the vanity of parties before their meaning was given
by the coming of armies
the Starts smoked in advance

the darkness in the bottle her exact shape
against the shapelessness of the mobs
the fame of skin
the last garters

what sings only rustles
withers
the shadow of people behind things   Things
behind the dazzle of cheap trash




* * *

Along with my cigar taken away now first thing in the morning
like everyone, from the thundering arenas of antiquity to the soundless concentration camps
of tomorrow.
The chicken seller is fed up with chickens,
only the imbecile above me hasn't had enough of his pounding speakers,
the piglet didn't want the garlic with which we're rubbing him.
The day vaguely recalls a piano left somewhere
under a waterfall, perhaps only under the quiet flow of years. In a world without
God
the far-off smile of the barbershop; a place of therapy in the deep of the afternoon
slowly but diligently flipping through the wardrobe of streets,
and sometimes even a suddenly stuck-out backside to boot
from the indignant strings of the quartet, at no one and everyone