haiku on the edge

black hole of your heart

jung's motel

BETWEEN POETRY AND PROSE

maxims

nice men

PROSE

houses for the dead

womb of half-fogged mirrors

overcoming tourism

anti-fairy tales

this sorry scheme of things

satan in the groin

irish genius

egregious.org

TEN POEMS

by

Vasko Popa

(1922-1991)

in new versions from the Serbian

by

Anthony Weir

I. THE HOUSE

Along with the first false sun
We got a visit from Agim
The woodman from near Prishtina

He brought us two red apples
Wrapped in a scarf
And the news that he'd finally got a house.

At last you've a roof over your head, Agim

No, no roof
The wind tore it off

You've a door and windows then

No door and no windows either
The winter carried them away

You've four walls at least

I've not even got four walls
All I have is a house like I said

The rest will be easy

[ *Agim, a masculine Albanian first name, means Dawn or Daybreak.
Prishtina is of course in Kosov @. ]

II. MAD EXIT

They scare me by saying
There's a screw loose in my head

They scare me more by saying
They'll bury me
In a box with the screws loose

They scare me but little do they realise
That my loose screws
Scare them

The happy crazy from our street
Boasts to me

III. RASTKO PETROVICH'S GRAVE

An old cleaning-woman from back home
Heard I'd visited
Rastko's Grave in Rock Creek
Cemetery in Washington

I make cakes she says
Every year on feast-days
And light candles
For my dead in the old country

And for the Osceola Indians
Since my neighbours told me
Their burying-ground lies
Underneath this whole block of houses

Now I"ll do the necessary
For that Serbian poet too

He's got nobody here either

IV. IN THE VILLAGE OF MY ANCESTORS

One hugs me
One looks at me with wolf-eyes
One takes off his hat
So I can see him better

Each one of them asks me
Do you know who I am

Unknown men and women
Take on the names
Of boys and girls buried in my memory

And I ask one of them
Tell me venerable sir
Is George Wol still alive

That's me he answers
In a voice from the Otherworld

I stroke his cheek with my hand
And beg him with my eyes to tell me
If I am still alive too

V.

Get out of my walled infinity
Out of the star-ring round my head
Out of my mouthful of sun
Get out of the laughable sea of my blood
Out of my flow, of my ebb
Get out of my beached silence
Get out I said
Get out
Out of the chasm of my life
Of the stark father-tree inside me
Get out How long must I cry get out
Get out of my bursting head
Get out
Just get out

VI.

They trap the she-wolf with steel jaws
Stretched from horizon to horizon

They take the golden mask from her muzzle
And tear the secret grass
From between her haunches

They bind her and set
Tracker and pointer dogs
To defile her

They hack her to pieces
And leave her
To the vultures

With the stump of her tongue the she-wolf catches
Living waters from the jaws of clouds
And puts herself together again

VII. THE LITTLE BOX'S PRISONERS

Open up little box
We're kissing your bottom and lid
Your keyhole and key
The whole world has crammed inside you
And now it looks like
Nothing like itself
Serenity its own mother
W ouldn't recognise it now
Rust will devour your key
Our world and us inside you
And you too in the end
We're kissing all four of your sides
And all four of your corners
And all twenty-four of your nails
And everything you've got
Open up little box

VIII.

Give me back my rags
My rags of pure dreaming
Of silk smiling
Of striped foreboding
Of my lacy cloth
My rags of spotted hope
Of shot desire
Of chequered looks
Of my face's skin
Give me back my rags
Give me when I ask you nicely

IX.

The lame wolf walks the world
One paw treads the sky
The others pace the earth
He walks backwards
Erasing each pawprint before him
He walks half-blind
With terrible bloodshot eyes
F ull of dead stars and living parasites
He walks with a millstone
Forced round his neck
An old tin can
Tied to his tail
He walks without resting
Out of one circle of dog-heads
Into another
He walks with the twelve-faced sun
On a tongue which lolls to the ground

X. THE BEAUTIFUL GOD-HATER

A regular customer in a local bar
Waves his empty sleeve
Fulminates from his undisciplined beard
We've buried the gods
And now it's the turn of the dummies
Who are playing at gods
The regular is hidden in tobacco clouds
Illuminated by his own words
Hewn from an oak trunk
He is as beautiful as a god
Dug up recently nearby

BONE TO BONE
homage to Vasko Popa
by Anthony Weir

Apart from everyone
I listen to the crows
And admire the blood-red
Japanese Quince flowers in April

The long-tailed dancer
With Cyrillic teeth
Is laughing
While I practise howling

Which is poetry