The Fairy-tale Begins
Come, 'cause I want to carve
a hole for you into heaven,
from where I pick a rainbow
just for you.
As a chisel I 'll use
a ray from that star,
which has perished.
With a piece of ice from it
I 'll cut up a cloud,
so that I can wrap you
with one half of it,
purely naked,
innocently helpless.
The Late Hour
Once when the bell
tolls
the last moments for orphans,
and the shepherd counts
his sheep before midnight,
ready for the slaughter-house,
and a startled bird
goes into free fall,
straight towards the centre of the Earth,
then we 'll turn all sunflowers' faces
towards the chapel
and the vultures will attack
the carcasses – the dead statues.
Words On The Mend
Cracked bark.
We don't know how the resin
sweated out by the crack
turns to honey in a woman's womb.
It's all so that
we can learn how to prophesy from wax,
from notes on the horizon,
where the candles melt away.
Fog underlined them,
while beating on them with a bone,
so that we might understand
the sign-language of the reeds
and the measurement of a cry.
Scream of a Star
As soon as solitude
shot through the waist
cuts the night with a stroke on the bell,
a quatrefoil grows up
in the crater of a fallen star.
The same as in our embrace.
The silence, which cut off the scream,
yawns somewhere in the bottom,
where a tree frog
dropped a clock tied to a string.
Well now let's throw a lump of clay
into the pit,
if we don't want merely to put a stop to time.
Portrait of Venus
With an eyelash I draw
some seductive breasts.
It dropped from your eye as you walked.
My throat has swelled into a bulb.
Grab the candlestick, because I'm drawing
the silhouette of a magical body.
On the skin there glistens
coppery sweat,
and I have felt a living pulse.
For God's sake I beg you
not to lose yourself in it
amongst the little crystals of copper,
when you turn cold along with the slain.
Absolution by a Nebula
When it was so cold outside
that winther itself was shivering,
and a single snowflake cast
its shadow from its armpits,
then there appeared
– only for you to touch –
a stellar nebula.
You strain your sight
into the vanishing distance.
You are unable
to gaze at it sparingly,
and we ask ourselves
why we always forgive the dead.
Mute Greeting
I crouched down by your calf,
and a field of azure flowers bloomed
in your pupils. I'm shaken
with the joy of being able to touch you.
You blink at me
and your eyes turn back into pearls
in a bath of fire.
We clamber up to a hunters' hide,
to a balcony weighed down by mists,
from where we greet
a new galaxy with someone's pupils inside,
so far away from the mists' edge
that they're not scared away by the slaughtering.
The Forbidden Position
Give yourself up to me,
completely and utterly.
I know the temptation of it
torments you too.
They set a man on fire somewhere,
to make him warm.
Our heads turn languid
from the hellish wine
which we licked out
of your palms during our walk.
Chiaroscuro in the abyss.
The devil is watching us
with the third eye of eternity.
In a Small Tulip's Cup
The bitter heart of a thistle
is noctambulant.
We make love like fireflies,
as careful as a doe
with a wolf licking her nape.
It's a sorrow's lenght longer, and more painful
than bathing in virgins' bone marrow.
At the end of the tunnel
we bend the frame of sand
within the reach of galaxies
at the red shift,
while tattooing it
with a background of sprawling skeletons.
Escape From The World
Before we die,
let's travel to the end of the world.
Mounting the Little Bear,
because I harnessed
a comet to the Pole Star.
Take this blanket,
which I whipped out of space for you
using a willow rod.
Let's gallop over quickly on an icicle,
before the bridge melts away,
and scatter petals
all over the Milky Way. As a sign
that we came here once long ago.
Translated from the Slovak by Andrew Billingham