English / Sample translations /

(Translated by Chris Hopkinson)

Overture

I was alone once again
after it all ended in tears
with that wonderful woman

I found out
that I had to get to know
a lot of women
before I realised
that I don’t want to know
a lot of women any more

so I launched myself into it
I was like a drone
sitting outside the hive for the first time
numb and open-mouthed
at the sight of all those stripy backsides

whenever you get rid of a relationship
and you feel truly free
you need a woman
to come along and show you that you really are



Woman In Motion

I know one woman
we always walk down from the hospital
to the docks in Libeň
with the tugboats
moored right up at the quayside
I haven’t got a flat of my own

I take her by the hand
she dodges the puddles
I’ve been going after her for a month now
she doesn’t say anything
that’s how she gradually creates the impression
that we’re so similar

I will hate her
I’ll kick at the pile of things
she’s thrown out of the cupboard
we don’t yet know that

we don’t yet know
that we’ll have a cupboard
and the clothes don’t yet know
that they’ll be in it
until she takes the cupboard
away

and we’ll have chrome kitchen units
one day she’ll load them
into the removal van too

there are still many things we don’t yet know
I take her by the hand
we’re still waiting for our first kiss
me and this remarkable
man-trap

these girls in their red jackets
these girls in their little red shoes
they wait for their time to come
and it’s only then that they say something
and start to gain the upper hand



Woman With Daughter

I know one woman
she drags her shopping bags behind her
it didn’t used to be like that

boys used to tell her
- I’ll get into debt for you
you are my island

she used to be beautiful
she still is
it’s just that now
you have to look a bit harder

things used to be so easy
once two men
had a fight over her
and the one who ended up marrying her
watched the whole thing from a car

things used to be better
everything was easy back then
now she has to support two daughters (13 and 17)
from the maintenance payments
she hasn’t been to the cinema in years

she met one young man
it’s fun with him – he’s a nice guy
all of a sudden the world is beautiful
he’s moved in with her

I look at her
through the window of the bar
my time inside’s begun
I’ve been out and had my fun

and this woman
is my neighbour
I nodded a greeting
she waved to me

if only she’d come in and sit down with me
put her bags in the corner
have a glass of wine
and not just hurry on home

only this morning I saw
her new bloke
necking her elder daughter
in the stairwell



The Woman We Used To Make Fun Of

I know one woman
who used to teach me social sciences
and psychology
at school

Malý used to throw paper planes in her lessons
Šefránek used to throw chalk at her
Zlatník stuck his head in plastic bags
and Stříbrný always used to sleep

in the third year she got replaced
by this eighty-year-old bloke called Mr. Chmura
in the 1930’s he’d built bridges in America
and he droned on for hours about steel structures
and at the end of the year our classmate Hrubý
went round us all with the teacher’s mark-book

I gave myself a B
it seemed a pretty fair mark to me

and I saw that woman
the one we used to make fun of
in a colour magazine
she was in a photo taken in a women’s prison

she’d killed her husband
cut him open with a kitchen knife
from top to bottom
they said he used to humiliate her
and corner her

she got eleven years
and we made fun of her



The Woman From The Boatyard

I know one woman
who lives
at the boatyard
she wraps up her crumpled body
in a raincoat

every day she pushes that cart of hers
all loaded up with shabby old junk
to the pub
on the quayside

- Come on, three crowns each
just to get myself a beer
come on young man

I won’t give her a penny

- Anybody else for hot dogs
last orders now
a bloke in a white coat
shouts
from the pavement across the road

this woman
takes my eyes away from
the bouncing breasts
of schoolgirls

she lays them
across the folds
of her tattered raincoat
where she’s got her nylons stretched out

an old woman
with a fly-swatter

a woman
I will never have



The Woman Who Left Me On The Ikea Bus

I know one woman
who left me
when we were having dinner together
she just ran away

just before that I’d been on the Ikea bus
I’d gone to buy a shelf
an easy-assembly one
that doesn’t take up too much room
on the journey

the driver was this bloke
who nearly fell out of his seat
when he swerved through the first bend
on the three-hundred yard stretch
from the underground station to Ikea

I thought of how
he’d dreamed his whole life
of becoming the driver of the
Ikea bus
and going back and forward along the same stretch of road
all day long
where all the manhole covers know him by name
and he could talk for hours
about every little crack in the tarmac

and in Ikea
the girl at the till gave me my card back
and said the money obviously hadn’t gone in yet
and I had to put back
that beautiful Thorsen shelf

I went back again on the Ikea bus
and the people carrying their Bursjön coffee tables
made of turquoise plastic
and their Sten shelves
which are made of whole
trees
measured me up
I ran away from that paradise of new ideas
and legged it into the underground
only the sad Ikea bus driver
gave me a conspiratorial wink
he had his own secrets

- So what does your daddy do?
his children were asked
by their teacher

the driver never understood
why they’d lied
he just had the feeling
that somewhere along the line
he’d been betrayed
just like the woman
who went to dinner with me

I began at the beginning
starting with this morning when that dickhead
slammed the door of his old Skoda into me
and then that accountant

by the time they brought us the pizza
I had shot down the entire government
I was amazed myself at how powerful he is –
this little bastard
who everybody always pushes aside

by the time I’d finished
the girl had got up
and gone

I’d won the war
but nobody was there to appreciate my victory