Woods and Chalices by Tomaz Salamun Page A

dawn
    Â 
    that will suit him, dark green plastic
    to pile up. Ribs creak
    a bit on an uneven floor. You don’t swing
    Â 
    your brain, you swing a dish. Once more you burn
    crumbs, a face, pathos. You yellow
    the black seed. I march nowhere. Honey flows
    Â 
    down my throat. Shed, breached, as if a machine
    gets dressed. Little barrels shielded us in the spirit
    of God’s eye. We poured them out as we swam.

Boiling Throats
    With the screech owl the seed grows from the face.
    The white vacuum pumps, the white vacuum pumps,
    how you are squeezed. The cylinder is always strict.
    The coil only sleeps in the clouds.
    The cat and I, we scratch ourselves,
    she will wreck my jacket.
    She waits for fresh scales and the tone.
    Clones evaporate faster.
    At Fanelli’s she whispers to herself the membrane
    of the pigeon mail. She waits for fresh scales
    and the tone. Little onion leaves are beneath the hooves
    of fallen angels. They look like sacks.
    They burst because of the farewell.
    Anyone who goes soft gives away his voice.

The Catalans, The Moors
    Poetry is a hatchery for martyrs. The river
    rinses the butter.
Warum Nichts
? A window
    is installed in a house, a house is installed in the dawn.
    A clock strikes the quarter hour. I am left behind,
    I am left behind, on the beach at Menorca
    I expire like a crocodile. In the region
    of Ciutat (with bicycle) near the young man
    in his bathing suit from the twenties,
    reading Cavafy. Did he have heavy hands?
    Goran has heavy hands. I’m molasses,
    don’t forget that. Cat with cloudy
    eyes. Voice found in the emptiness
    and driving you to the precipice. Graveyards
    as at Potoĉka Zijalka. Layers on layers.

Sand and Spleen Were Left in Your Nose
    Blow into whales, schoolboy. The bait doesn’t hurt.
    Elephants, when alarmed, no longer know
    the river. They carry penicillin between
    ears and ribs, and trample reeds. Chess
    comes from their backs. Birds’ pecking
    on a tarp is only one part of rocking. The sea
    is black with fine sand. The white cork shines.
    Palm trees that open beneath the robbed one
    (all the checks, all the hash, two of Jure’s letters),
    you watch from two levels. The Ganges can wash
    away the double. Luckily the current was fast enough
    and in the morning, already at sunrise,
    at the ritual murders, only one sipped and reaped
    and didn’t care at all to wake up.

Arm Out and Point the Way
    Vigorous, disfigured mice,
    tassels or bonbons. Latte (the name
    of the bitch with white fur), did the wheels
    Â 
    overeat like the heads of memory at the ends
    of wood-limbs by Deacon? They were quite
    devoured. Stretched out, softened,
    Â 
    given and given. Slime
    washes windows. Peter, as a rule,
    dances. Shoe shining is coming back,
    Â 
    the white matrix of the Announcing Angel.
    People walking along roads
    is coming back, the fluttering
    Â 
    of overcoats and the stopping of coaches.
    The rushing to work and the paying
    of tolls. We’re a bunch of flowers. Napoleons
    Â 
    of the Bible. Worms between butter
    and jam at the vaults of Inter Conti.
    Ceelia Min signs.
    Â 
    The foam curses and counts.
    A bottle is missing.
    Surely it’s hidden under the coverlet.

Fallow Land and the Fates
    The boy scrubs the kitchen and crushes
    the dot to mom. Godfathers’ microwaves
    catch fire. Snakes, Easter eggs, gray hats,
    and crampon lamps flake from the pillars
    on the walls. He who brews brandy
    pants on screes, incantation.
    Boils he who carries the mountain
    and this one who unsaddles, supports yuppies.
    I rotate breasts and papers. The river
    makes the mesh. It’s easy to find shapes
    in the profiles of stones, but in the mud
    there’s the weight of the horse-collar. Sinking stools,
    you can’t pierce water! Only the scattered
    water can drink water. The full water twists.

Perfection
    Leather without history. Strength without
    rickets. From a drawer. On the hand a wire. Blood
    is silk. Walk silently. Blood is