[...]
1915
We are neither scientists nor abstracted priestly Chrysostoms
nor are we heroes driven with crazy clamour to battle
and left sprawling senseless on sea-floor and sunny hilltop
and all over the thunder-beaten fields, all over the world.
Now the hours bathe in bad blood under the blue firmament...
But we are far from everything. We sit deep in the dark peace-barracks:
wordless and undivided as indissoluble matter itself.
Yesterday we still cried and tomorrow, tomorrow maybe the century will admire our work.
Yes! Because quick force jets from our ugly stubby fingers,
and tomorrow we shall toast our triumph on the new walls.
Tomorrow we shall throw life onto the ruins from asbestos and iron and titanic granite
and away with the gilded state-swags! the moonlight! the music-halls!
We'll soon set up great skyscrapers, an Eiffel Tower will be our toy.
Basalt-based bridges. New myths from singing steel in the square
and shrieking blazing trains thrust onto the dead tracks
to shine and run their course like meteors dizzying the sky.
New colours we mix, new cables we lay undersea,
and we seduce ripe unmarried women to make earth nurse new types
and the new poets can rejoice as they sing the face of the new times coming:
in Rome, Paris, Moscow, Berlin, London, and Budapest.
1918
[...]
1923
[...]
1945
[...]
1958
[...]
1963
I.
A chair remembers.
In an empty room
bound tight in a grid of shadows
it can still feel the soft
taste of a woman's thighs
the pawing of a greedy-fingered burglar
a small boy's heavy breathing
as he took his mother-of-pearl penknife
to split the heart of its hardwood frame
it has not forgotten yet
the time it was lent round to the neighbours
but nobody would sit on it there
for they all seemed afraid of it.
Those were the bad times but
its grief found no tears.
It still has no tears.
In silence and with noble unassertiveness
it meets death here
in the empty room.
II.
A chilly rumple
the bed sprawls
on four carved legs like a ghastly idol
a body without bones and without skin
it has been mangled through the dark hours
and left as soon as day showed in the sky.
Deaf and dumb
it cannot blab and chatter out whatever
went on in it or around it
a few hours back
accomplice of fury in lust
of nausea twisting in spasms.
It says nothing about the hot roused body scents
the rhythmless agonies of hearts
the great sighs
the gasping assault
the giving ecstasy.
Prostrate in daylight
it faces the open window
like a run-over corpse
abandoned at the kerb by its killers.
III.
Look in through the keyhole
through the hole cut out
of the old plank door.
Look in just with a glance
and your eyes may light on
the big well-whetted
sharp-pointed blood-draped
knife.
Someone must have thrown it
down on the three-legged table.
Maybe a man betrayed and heart-sick
maybe a woman pregnant and ashamed.
Hard steel
glares in the light
but keeps silent.
Both murderer
and murdered
are safe from its witness.
Only the red smell of blood
shouts for help
from an alien world.
IV.
The master has died.
The sculptor's studio is derelict
like an abandoned shed
a chaotic store
an absolute cesspit
hiding mortal exhibits
and hideous dreams and treasures no one has seen.
Finished sculptures in stone and wood
innocence in forms of girls
study for some coat-of-arms
unsmiling bronze of an old woman
masks of gnomes
mythical monsters
and torsos
that the master
for all his pains failed
to animate.
They loll about there mixed with clay-scrapings
under shrouds of stone-powder
and their companions are dead tools and rusty pots.
At times the janitor opens the door on them
fumbles among them
rooting about for something then breaks into a smile
and once again
leaves them behind closed doors.
V.
Waves dash her on the wharf
on the high stone wall,
they raggle
the chain in her bow,
they crack her ribs.
Once
she was very dear to a man and a woman
who used her to measure distance
and made her boards their bridal bed.
Then in a fit of rage
the man stove in her side
the river whirled her away
tugged at her
tore at her
but could not gulp her down.
She lies at the foot of the wharf, dying.
Sometimes children pelt her with stones
sometimes fish spring up from the reeds
to gape at a blue
white red
painted wreck.
VI.
In those days
it was greeted by a brass band
at the workshop gates.
Its wheels were garlanded with red paper ribbons.
The mechanical miracle in situ.
500 horse-power at command.
Sometimes it cut up rusty
grumbled and squealed
and renounced all obedience.
And then it got going again.
It lived among the workers for years
just like their brother.
But it came to a standstill at last
and was dumped in a ditch
beyond the board-fence.
Going home in the evenings
the men toss words to it
old crook
drop dead.
From time to time it still sweats out
one
wan
waterlogged
oildrop.
VII.
Someone has shut
the fine mahogany casket.
Ripe-coloured - wonderful.
Deep in superb carvings
a gold wedding-ring
lies rolled
in purple velvet.
It was a bride's ring
a virgin's
and before the wedding-night
she killed herself
in a fever of love
shuddering with terror.
Before she took the poison
she shut away the ring
forgotten ever since that day.
Cast off
it is asleep
perhaps even dead.
It has no ears for the woodworm
crunching patiently
at the wall of the casket.
VIII.
A time-expired wall-clock is lying
on the rubbish-dump
its dial
facing the sky like a human face.
Once it measured the river of time.
It comes back in memory
the whole house
the whole village
moved as it dictated
then it developed an unintelligible burr
started to cough like an asthmatic
and died.
Children made it a treasure trove.
They smashed up its hands
plucked out its works.
Now worms and spiders
bivouack in its bowels.
Sometimes the dog strolls up
to piss on it.
IX.
Who remembers
Vincent van Gogh's clay boots
in front of the door.
What trampled things
they are, downtrodden things.
Life has deserted them
yet they are not dead.
Filled with the breath
of a deranged painter's
soul.
Immortal
finally, and holy.
Today they squirm
in art-dealers' nets.
The market
will quote their value.
X.
Greasy and tatty
cards lie scattered
about the house.
Their backs
are nicked and
marked with sharpers' fingerprints.
Some of them have
soaked up women's tears.
They have made men
knife-happy
bottle-happy.
Now they are not worth a look.
When they fulfilled
their beastly office
they died.
The very broom seems
to sweep away from them
in abhorrence.
1964