English / Sample translations /

/translated by Petra Žallmannová (Catherine Deneuve´s Fate, Cobbler, Blue Mom, Where is the Urn?) and Andrew Oakland/

CATHERINE DENEUVE’S FATE

John watched Catherine Deneuve and he liked her.
He married Lucy Smith and had two children with her, drove
too fast and smashed himself against a tree.

Lucy Smith got married again.
Time and troubles were stealing her beauty and the abyss
between her and Catherine Deneuve widened.
However, John, who would be the only one to judge,
was already playing chess with his Maker.
And Henry O’Malley, Lucy’s second husband, has never even caught a glimpse of Catherine Deneuve
or at least, he had no idea whether he’d ever seen her or not.



THE SAME DAY

What else but to smoke;
in the lungs, in the fingers
the dust of lightly bullet-brushed walls.

What else but the organ
of street calm;
in golden rings
of melody and syllable
the air shimmers.

I step out of the stream,
whatever this means.

I am John,
bathed, smelling of pine needles
and the blood of local game .

I am the way
to those mysterious v victims of peace .



THE ANSWER

We asked that man
who heard in the bar chanson
the song of the ash-grey lark.

On Sunday morning he prayed,
kneeling in a Prague tram.

Everything I need,
he told us at the stop,
comes at the right time.

Tram braking;
screeching approval of Heaven.



YOUR OUTLOOK
(in honour of Ivan Blatný)

On the sill of a skylight, a captive pigeon.
Its soul, captive within,
bends, swings;
in Brno thousands such.

From the deep something speaks to a feathered shape;
a skylight is a quite poetic slope.

You look, see the contours
play with you,
a game of once-was.



…

No, I haven‘t forgotten you;
you played piano at the Solovky.
Wasn’t myself that day,
Liszt’s rain was dripping on
my beetle’s wings.

Now, years later, I hear you again,
black keys and a knife in my sleeve.
Hell’s jaws spewing out masques
and pipers. Curtain…

And you, again, are
cosmetic as a wrinkle.



GOLDBEARD

You curly onion, you’ll
be laughing, too! Marvel that I’m still in control, that I
haven’t blown my top.
Let me starve for a week
if I leave this because of
the mayor, but wait until
I spot you on the street, you mole,
you empty sponge, you’re not
going to make fun of me, not even if
your beard turns gold.



WARRIOR

Under the clouds
there‘s nothing to do.

Under the clouds,
strictly speaking,
all done.

Gabriele d´Annunzio
landed on the lawn
behind the arboretum.



A SOFTER PASSION

A hedgehog doesn‘t rustle, rather a bird
in the floodplain forest.
Water full of buoys,
the bank ever closer.

Nothing to touch,
just the vistas through groves and knolls…

And rain which
hums so strangely…

In this landscape
at sight
so ordinary.



COBBLER

The cobbler was a simple man.

He had much in common with crickets,
cicadas and grasshoppers.
He was close to a stag beetle, weevil,
and the green-headed woodpecker.

Often he sat on his front porch.

The cricket brought a song,
brought rosin;
the stag beetle chipped in with steel pincers,
and the woodpecker served as a hammer.
Peck, peck, Bang!

The man looked so cheerful
that to be completely happy that day,
he would need just
a pair of
beetle wings.



BLUE MOM

You unfortunate creature… have you recognized her?

Yes, it is my mother.
She is just blue and dead.
Too late to ask her to bring us some soup.

So go, go home,
poor boy!

Could you let me stay, sir, please.
I’ll wait with mom for the night to fall
I’ll stay outside.
Don’t worry, I’ll let the Joneses know in the morning
and then I’ll tell father.



EE – AW

Niklas was draped in
a mildewy crimson cape.
On his head he wore a stork‘s nest.

On Sunday after mass he stood,
rushes in hand,
by the porch column.

His hairless, weedy chest rose
and fell; from afar one heard
the creaking of his ribs,
baked from white clay.

No recipient of alms, he
would launch himself into terrible wails
reminiscent of a donkey‘s bray…

Ee-aw!!! Ee-aw!!! Ee-aw!!!



WHERE IS THE URN?
(According to a 1948 orientation map at the Brno Central Cemetery)

Point A is being sprayed with autumn drizzle.
Graveyard management office right by the entrance – the front steps occupied by a gloomy emissary of eternity, Mr. Dove. He’s gaping across the path at Point D, the graveyard flower decoration center. Four buckets of freshly cut calla lilies, whitish bow.
“Welcome,” says the black-coated man and nods meekly. A sob escapes Peter’s lips. Just wish it didn’t
rain… They are passing C and B: the morgue and the ceremonial hall. The air stirs with a sudden flutter of the year 1926: Imagine the hands of the workers raising the richly decorated verticals of facades, the climbing ladders for the souls of the dead which will toddle along them like ladybugs to reach the marble fingers and then take off, straight to the paradise of functionalism; the sketches of Villa Viola are already strewn all over the working desk of Lord Fuchs. Vial filled with ink.
“Hm, hm…” the poet murmurs. “That Fuchs, he was some old weirdo anyway, wasn’t he?”
They ascend to a raised loft where one of the graves was recently taken by a celestial squatter. “Volleyball ref, elevated umpire,” explains the man in a black coat to Hrbáč.
Leftover debris of past funerals, oh, the petrol of memories!
The rain coughs and splutters in spirals of charcoal briquette smoke in which one can always smell the cunty odor of partially rotten wreaths, the python tongue of coat smacks, the mosquito net woven from raindrops – and columbarium on their right hand. Point K.
Behind the crematory office stands the crematory itself (F!) and finally, finally E.
The Urn Grove. Another paradise, let the music play nice/Closed up too soon, the saddest bloom/Why? Ask at the door, they’ll tell you more.
And good old Dove nods, yeah, in 1949, the commies swept the heroine Ema Formanová to G.
G: Funerary Storehouse.



A FLUX

They stuck John the statue out
on the balcony, in his hand
a lighted cigarette.

Sundry days fly by.
Light and darkening, now
summer‘s ending.