To a Friend from Kampa I knew him.
A bit of an oddball,
now and then a wanderer from the rowan hills,
a healer of lepers in black India.
He clung to the rescue lines
on the left flank of lunar airships.
He took his name from his beloved. ↗ Sunflowers from Your Palms Perhaps I will lose myself
in your fragrances.
I would like to repeat it
at least a hundred times over.
Like sunflowers
with yellow swords. ↗ Perhaps a Mitigating Circumstance Why should I not admit it. I am harshly trained;
poems now and then grow pale,
turning to ice and to a windowsill,
and the birds slide down.
They sing, Let us knead from clay,
the herons — ashen, white and red.
With a breath of fragrance, the girls’ laps
take nothing of what is left of them.
Then they quarrel in riddles;
they tumble down the hillsides, sleep in mountain huts.
Along the way, oh God, they take no hostages.
From afar they catch the scent of charred temples, a heavy reek;
in nets and in midnight prayers,
I cannot do otherwise — barefoot I step across the shadows. ↗ Prayer Before Three in the Morning, or Escaping Words Even if you did not exist,
be here a while;
I will tell no one.
She,
whom I loved
and led in secret into the woods
and licked the sweat from her belly,
is no more.
We sat through the whole night,
believing in the winter aconites beneath the snow
and at daybreak…
You will never guess.
At daybreak we could, and were allowed,
once more again.
Even if you did not exist,
it was a beautiful fight;
the confessors slept
and you did not wake them.
You would not have turned them against us anyway.
Even if you did not exist,
be here a while,
I will tell no one. ↗ What František from Maková hora Told Me I would never want to be a poet;
I can imagine the torment.
A poet must say great things in small words.
It eats away the soul, it hurts far more
than you think.
He must visit the temples of the sick,
the lazarettos of darkness,
into the leper colonies,
and perhaps beyond the river Ganges send medicine
at his own expense.
He must walk on foot to the knights of Blaník,
tend to their horses,
love the hay and the aftermath,
when drought comes to harvest.
He must have a nose
for injustice,
hands so long
that he can frisk airplanes,
a heart burning and thirsting,
and he must not ask
whether to rattle the bars
brings hands covered in blood
or death itself.
That is not all.
A field of landmines awaits them,
plains of envy,
and if ten commandments are not enough,
he must invent more.
An eleventh poem,
damp and dependent,
combing out its hair
and stepping into the river,
in whose pools swim pike
the size of the moon.
Then he tosses his head:
I would never want to be a poet.
Yet secretly I would wish
that they would take me in,
those boys, talkative beyond despair,
for a little while, to mercy. ↗ An Attempt at a Wish Do not touch that boat of mine,
it has wings made from the fins of orcas;
from pilgrims a little dread and a little awe,
it swaddles words
soaked in the night's urine,
in the corner sits my grandfather,
and deeper still, a cobbler's bench.
That boat —
oh, you, my highest one,
if it were a temple boat
and feared the breaching of its hull,
hang sails of rowan from it;
it would sail back through the oaken gates.
You taught me:
Prayer is not a shadow,
but always a deed.
I feel that boat,
the battered one,
kicked in the flanks by iron boots…
So that boat, an eight-oar at the very least,
would soak into the earth;
along the throat of Prague's embankments
the feet of nuns go pattering.
To this day the morning mist rises here,
it holds within it the heart of cnidarians,
a timetable, all the arrhythmias,
a symbiosis of darkness and the rough scar of vocal cords.
Lord God,
do something at last.
Rid me of questions. ↗ A Page Torn from the Gospel It brings news from the battlefield,
a trampled visor.
Behind our village, a wasteland,
nettles grow there to the sky and itch
on the places of the morning's touch;
they cover lips with scars,
the blackberry wine of the Aztecs
cools and waves at us,
for to reach the meeting place
brings good stories for sleeping,
and then they drag us like rabble to the cross.
So tell me, how often are we defenceless,
who will singe the fine hairs in your armpit?
Before us slither royal boa constrictors. ↗