Woods and Chalices by Tomaz Salamun

Pessoa Scolding Whitman
    The whore of all solar systems and diligent
    little ant, let’s begin with this restriction. Until here,
    cows, but here the guests can already wipe
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    their backs, except we dry this laundry
    outdoors and the muffs also hang, although
    it’s summer at Jama in Bohinj. Ŝpela is already
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    a great-grandmother now, she has a grandson
    who plays hockey at Tufts, already forgotten as well,
    like those who played chess here:
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    Cvit, RaÅ¡a, Avčin, the awesome Montanists,
    you can be Mister God in your country
    (RaÅ¡a), but here in Oxford we wear coats
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    differently, also stutter a little, out of pathos,
    so this then pours into our Carinthian blood,
    and after my sister, who got married
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    to Detela, bore a genius (deceased), and one
    good and important writer,
    now the living and the dead pull each other’s hair
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    and with Barbara we’re civil servants, telephones
    constantly bang against us, and she was a little
    in love, and I, too, and we sang
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    Å¾ure,
put together for us by our mothers,
    Madam Silva in her instance, and out
    of this are born poets and civil servants,
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    who every free minute break for the Strand,
    give search for Mikuž, another boy scout,
    another nephew, another son, translating
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    that dreadful Latvian, I can find him
    nowhere, and then Lojze arrives, the type
    who would not believe I wished him well,
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    and yet today, first he gets lost in Harlem,
    then he still comes up to Phillis,
    who was wildly searching for him, and together
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    they watch
Microcosmos,
Phillis
    howls with enthusiasm and they talk
    fourteen hours without stopping, while
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    I, with Metka, rush to the same film:
    how the snails fuck doesn’t move us, hardly
    staying upright against catatonic fits
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    of sleep because I must save my energy
    so I will wake up in the morning because then
    I furiously type and sniff everything: Barbara,
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    if Govic rises, I will stare once more
    at the muscles of the inflated Avčin
    rowing, how should I be interested in
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    the little sex lives of insects
    and robbers, and whether I truly
    forgot a gift for her birthday.

The Pacific Again
    Open the bread.
    Oil the wound.
    Throw it up, puke it, speak it.
    As long as you won’t speak, it will hurt.
    It will hurt, too, when you say it.
    A caraway seed is a bath towel.
    Chafers that fold on bones.
    Puteshestveny’s bundles are clearly starving.
    The hunger reflects.
    From the statue, from Oregon,
    south of your Mihec, who is poured
    by a lotus blossom emptying.
    Order a mouth.
    You don’t know you can order it.
    Few things are always technical.

Libero
    The fan carried Liquido in his arms.
    If I make him a face L will spring.
    We also capitalize the countermand
    and mythological monsters help us
    so our apertures don’t squirt.
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    Crown witness, crown garden,
    watch the white lamb!
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    Boŝtjan read me and then
    died underwater.
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    Ophelias on hooks, I’m a statue.
    I’m a statue, fairy tales rustle.
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    BoÅ¡tjan read me and then
    died underwater.
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    Who will be the third Saint Sebastian?
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    The world wants to forget.
    We want to forget
    the dead and youth and freedom.

In New York, After Diplomatic Training
    The good sides of a siege are not also those
    smudged by a horse. There’s a face
    in the clause. Seven cherry trees. The notorious
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    seldom ever helps. He thinks mainly
    about his blades. Do the smaller
    and bushy help? Those seized below the deck?
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    The roots are to be followed to sand and sky.
    The leaves rumble on them. If there’s no balance
    of silver and isotope—staffs—does it mean
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    we, too, can be happy? Without rocks,
    there is no pier. The shelter extends to the bottom.
    Objects are already sorted in the womb.
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    The creamy pigment sticks to some.
    Someone will have swelled English,
    a flayed stone in Potoĉka Zijalka. White