Tomaž Šalamun

Honey and Holofernes
Poetry

         

Tomaž Šalamun is a Slovenian poet. He was born in 1941 in Zagreb, Croatia, and raised in Koper, Slovenia. He has published 30 collections of poetry in his native Slovenian language. Šalamun spent two years at the University of Iowa Writer's Workshop in the 1970s and has lived for periods of time in the United States since then. For a time, he served as Cultural Attaché to the Consulate General of Slovenia in New York. He has had several collections of poetry published in English, including The Selected Poems of Tomaž Šalamun (Ecco Press, 1998); The Shepherd, the Hunter (Pedernal, 1992); The Four Questions of Melancholy (White Pine, 1997); Feast (Harcourt, 2000), "Poker" (Ugly Duckling Presse), "Row!" (Arc Publications), "The Book for My Brother" (Harcourt), "Woods and Chalices" (Harcourt), and "There's the Hand and There's the Arid Chair" (Counterpath, 2009). His poems have been translated into more than twenty languages. In 2004, he was the recipient of Romania's Ovid Festival Prize. He lives in Ljubljana, Slovenia.

 

HONEY AND HOLOFERNES
 
translated by Michael Biggins

 

FLORENZA

Il gnoco.  The uppper dishwashing shift. Laure is sad
from the fluff.  Juan moves around like a shadow. 
Rocks dust Lipica.  We fall with Ludwig's head.
Dry land.  Sarah.  I wake up in my T-shirt.  They lifted
me up on a pulley, in silk.  Do you sway when you slam
into the cliff walls?  What does that do to your
bone prints?  They put ointment on the little skins.  Stored,
bound, cropped them.  Chiama mi.  I'll ride forth at
the fox hunt, from under the hide.  Here's the spot where
Browning signed.  I'm fond of Procacci.  Pathway, pathway, Bello
Sguardo.  Ho mangiato il farro.  Mi ha piaciuto
molto.  You, made of fresh moving body parts, the sun's
shining again.  We folded up the buttonhole.
We gave, and gave, and gave, and gave, not there, and gave.

 

HONEY AND HOLOFERNES

I've invented a machine that, as soon as a goldfinch opens
its throat, starts dumping bags of concrete inside.  Who licked the candies
into concrete, we don’t know.  Who then brought

the concrete to life, we don’t know.  The goldfinch sails.  The goldfinch
sings.  Where are you, Eugenijus?  Racing across, opening
a hollow with your fingernails.  You the pain of the contour, me

that of the train.  Linda Bierds drives a car that comes
from the Tatras.  The condor ripens the  bird.  My trousers smell like
gasoline.  Do you see the pool?  Do you see the pool?  Do you see

the angel's elbow?  It led me to those cliffs arrayed
like Vikings.  Zebras have scraped eyes.
Ibrahim, Drago and Miklavž are great guys.

Iodine boils a bird's head.  It dies in the mud.  I
swallow bread.  What did you see in the inner
darkness to earn it?  A bifurcation for

both and the bent, silver-plated head of a
walking stick?  Boxes of honey delivered
by parachute, which deer antlers

provided?  Pythagoras is plunder.  A cat licks
his ears all summer and winter.  Pins directed
the blood flow of saints.  Stones erode

on the shoals.  I shove Diran's head away from
the table.  This clump is a tombolo.  And that
pigeon on the plate.  Mother of pearl.  Gray head.

 

GRISCHA'S FEZ

To chop up cotton and read through a cookbook.
To be running behind and hang from your lower jaw.
I'm free to drink bottoms up.  Ganymede

gets stuck in a summerhouse.  And oh how flowers grew by the
pathways.  Do you see how I lopped off their heads?
Do you see how I step on his scalp as an officer?

They poured streams of hot water on me to harden my
mustache.  They peeled the enamel off Cassandra's tooth.
By god, she marches over purple plums.  She salutes and

keeps marching on the purple plums.  A washed pot, if
you shine a deer in it, vomits craquellures back in your
mouth and eyes.  King of the news, hitch up your sleigh, trample

the taffeta and yarrow.  There are petals in the cups.  They
beckon to a feast of the moon.  Elongated horses are
the hairstyle around the moon.  Giants fight over cards. 

The giants rake leaves.  The rakes may go, the sand remains,
the rakes may go, the earth remains.  Bang! goes a rake handle,
and hits a giant in the head, because somebody stepped on the

rake tines.  Doves are the tiles between cathedrals.  Woodsmen
bend down, get up, bend down, the town hall is split on its
peak.  A peacock takes pity on a lake.  Replace

tooth with fake gemstone, woodsman with wooden
boat.  Mists rampage in the comics.  The horse is fond
of white.  A beggar banging with a stick on the edge of

a bell has sand and rain pouring from his hat.
Gums are a cozy nest.  Draw little jugs out of the clay.  The Turks
made off with Srebrna while she drank at a well.

 

PHARAOHS AND KINGS, KASSEL, PARIS

We had pretty girls and were excellent dancers,
Andro and I.  The dual number is disappearing.  We slid
over Karst mountains and drove to the sea.  Do you remember
Cabiria?  The skirts were long and people stared.
Everywhere people made way for you.  But in Paris
at your Biennale des jeunes, it was me who prowled the night.
It's nice when young people cry with pleasure and you float and
listen to their sobbing.  Robert became gay in the
sacristy, when a bear pounced on him.  I reminded him
of that holy man.  And who counts the souls that are
grateful to him?  Tomaž Brejc said, what have you
been up to, you're so refreshed, and we're all run down and
tired.  It's true.  I should have stood by Andraž back then
and trimmed his wings.  Brothers can't sleep with each other.

 

UNTIL PESSOA NOTHING

Leopard, droplet, leopard, why do you roll around
a lathe?  Shiraz was the name of Pepi's cat.  A violet
hoop, jostling in the whiteness if the sun drips,

thank you, if the rain drips, if it shines.  Are killed
animals softer than unkilled ones?  Covered with dirt,
what can you see?  Lockets and octaves.  An evergreen

spruce.  A deep well and a shallow one, see how they
kiss.  In-lining fox furs.  Birds and flesh,
pierced with a wooden tip.  You lick your lips

and ride on a lateral lift called an
iron horse.  You put his hand in front of the lamp
to make figures.  Bodies have feelers.

The roads are laid on a ventricle:  mulatiera,
in the mountains, with windows, with steamships, Liliput
is on water, tickles the earth's crust, protects it from

earthquakes.  The steamships can vanish and continue
their way through the brambles.  The fur
is bemittened.  In oatmeal today, tomorrow in

an abyss.  Now the squirrel already has teeth and a
compote of roof, bottom and sky.  Horizontal
is for running and gathering.  Horizontal

is for hoarding together food like
blankets heaped one on the other, to capture the
warmth.  Camoes sailed away by boat.

 

THE POEMS WILL BE PUBLISHED IN
BLUE TOWER, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2011