SEEKING, I AM
Seeking work. I am a 47-year-old male
looking to split and chop wood.
I am cheap. The one condition
is any kind of accommodation.
20/1/2018
* * *
FILMS
All those films with a brothel
and a camera in each room,
with a secret area crammed with televisions,
in which the villain screws his lover
with his big toe: each turned a different way.
I hadn’t seen one for a long time.
When you leave me, this is what I want
(behind a revolving bookcase at the touch of a button),
except a respectable little hotel instead of a brothel
in a nice area, beside a cycle path.
We are now sitting – each lost in our own thoughts –
black-and-white lover’s scenes
and the footage from the hidden cameras hidden everywhere;
I’ll just reimagine it all when you leave me.
* * *
SCENE FROM A WATERFOWL HUNT
I don’t want you, you say. You say to me,
I don’t feel anything. I don’t feel anything for you.
Ice-cream cake at night and you are upset,
he didn’t speak, he pushed in, he knew, he pushed in,
Over a box of ice-cream
you say you are more and more like her, you
there at night, instead of pushing in,
cakes, you say, over the bread rolls,
nervous owl, instead of
he didn’t say a word, and at night
pushing in there, wordlessly into me there,
you watch like your mother, you eat, you sleep,
he pushed in, he pushed into me there
and didn’t watch, didn’t observe,
deeply, deep. It’s happening on a fragile
paper boat. The ash-grey herons
build a nest from these words,
from the words of a hit, where I sing
a falsetto, a falsetto voice, me, a frontman
beloved by all, the darling of the gods,
with a voice an octave higher.
4/5/2016
* * *
FRAGMENTS
O nature, morning with a coffee and a cigarette!
Today not even the sound of the woodpecker.
…………………..like old times.
……………………………
The two of us cannot break up,
I said to you at night over a cigarette.
……………………………..
……………………………..
1/2018
* * *
NEW SPECIES OF FISH HAVE BEEN DISCOVERED
New species of fish have been discovered
and they ate the vegetation where they lived.
Then new species of fish,
which ate what we did.
The fish, which ate what we did,
also ate our young.
The coastal wetlands were transformed
into rice fields – the water became
dirtier and dirtier.
Fishing also played a part
with nylon nets. And cutting down the wild reeds.
More and more boats. And the murder
of the National Park officer.
23/1/2018
* * *
WHEN I RETURNED
M.B.
When I returned, a volcano
was erupting in the corner of the room,
a ship was sinking in another,
which the rats were abandoning.
In the middle of the flat the storm weakened
and a swarm of tiger mosquitoes, drunk with malaria,
were swollen immobile in the deforested kitchen.
New agriculture was flourishing
and the ubiquitous rabbits
were gorging on the last nectar. Here were countless
sheep, goats, dogs and pigs.
And thin cats nuzzled against mute chieftains
in headdresses and colourful cloaks,
sitting with dignity on chairs.
It was you I could no longer find.
19/1/2018
* * *
COME!
It will be the day, when you recently
learned to physically fight. The first place: there,
which connects you to your grandad with his red pocket knife.
Go there, where you and your papa did what was forbidden
(upstairs and downstairs, where there might be spiders).
In as many hours as our Čik has years.
We will wait an hour, just the two of us.
The second place: that same day!
It will be in the town, where last summer
to the sound of loud music
you met that nice black man.
We’ll meet at that place, where in summer
when we were arguing and one guy gently explained,
what would happen to us, if we chose
the wrong path…do you remember?
He was slightly drunk and wanted my autograph.
We’ll be there at that exact time
when you start the weekly lesson
with your favourite crazy pensioner.
We will wait there for an hour, just the two of us.
Come, then we can work it out.
We will wait for you there, Dad and Mum.
15/2/2018
JUST LIKE BILL FAY…
Just like Bill Fay I’m looking for relationships
with aphids, centipedes, grubs,
with lemmings, mites, worms, earwigs
et cetera. With imperfections, bumps and pores
on the tomatoes in which I lie. I would like to sleep,
dream, awaken on sticks – and have a relationship.
But I just can’t sleep on it, so
I’m still staring at the tomato, rotten at the bottom
and a pale-white green at the stalk,
at the lower leaves as though burnt,
at what the sun and rain created,
at the tubers, tumours and muscles,
at the stains, scabs, blotches, at the red lipstick,
at everything that looks unfriendly,
at the aphids building black minarets,
at the earwigs going through my cigarettes,
at the mites raking in my skin
as if in the sand, at grub after grub,
as they sail in, anchor, sail out,
at the flags flying on the masts
Translated by Graeme Dibble