In the Tongues of Bells
–Tomaž Šalamun
I decant a blossom. It goes before you.
You’re filled with Uriah. Green, tiny and pressed.
Blueness is a furious cake, a round
cake where yearning sleeps. Are the balls
the balls of the earth? At wells
and fountains? At Atlas’ pillar?
You say that you’d be my property.
You’d lose everything instantly.
I still wouldn’t notice you anymore, injured.
I choose from the thickness. Honey collects
cries. And when the body thickens and you get up
because I dress you, because I congeal you.
I erase you back in the past. I draw
a white flap, shine a white flap.
Parting
–Gane Todorovski
you’re leaving and not looking back
the age-old fear of turning into stone
now germinates in you like pain
that something passes and you’re left alone
you’re leaving and you carry much
in that mute threat of yours
without a note, forgiveness, or farewell
cold marble, dry-eyed, no remorse.
You’re leaving hurriedly and without voice
and flapping like a startled bird:
you disappear beyond return and soon
become a shadow, neither seen nor heard.
Interior
–Boris A Novak
Mysterious are the characters of things close to us:
familiar as a man’s face, but strangely near
from ceaseless use: but between the two
who is a man and who is a garment?
Silent is the tongue of the shoes put on.
(Things that serve are silent.)
When I take them off, they suddenly speak up:
a bottomless abyss since I am no longer there.
When I take off my glasses, what do they see?
Without them I see only myself. Insane.
Things live, I am alive and alone.
I sleep alone in a closet. When I unlock my eyelids,
I see gaping sleeves of my jacket
and my trousers without my legs. Empty.
The First Madrigal
–Anna Swir
That night of love was pure
as an antique musical instrument
and the air around it.
Rich
as a ceremony of coronation.
It was fleshy as the belly of a woman in labor
and spiritual
as a number.
It was only a moment of life
and it wanted to be a conclusion drawn from life.
By dying
it wanted to comprehend the principle of the world.
That night of love
had ambitions.
The Second Madrigal
-Anna Swir
A night of love
exquisite as a
concert from old Venice
played on exquisite instruments.
Healthy as a
buttock of a little angel.
Wise as an
anthill.
Garish as air
blown into a trumpet.
Abundant as the reign
of a royal Negro couple
seated on two thrones
cast in gold.
A night of love with you,
a big baroque battle
and two victories.
Thank You, My Fate
-Anna Swir
Great humility fills me,
great purity fills me,
I make love with my dear
as if I made love dying
as if I made love praying,
tears pour
over my arms and his arms.
I don’t know whether this is joy
or sadness, I don’t understand
what I feel, I’m crying,
I’m crying, it’s humility
as if I were dead,
gratitude, I thank you, my fate,
I’m unworthy, how beautiful
my life.
