A Poem for Those Who Deserve It

I.

Truly, this poem is only for those
who deserve it:

a poem for those whose soles have lines          
which are legends copied from
old maps, all
the errors and erasures included,                      
transformed by history, marks
seen today as mountain chains dozing
on the great fault-lines;                              

a poem for those whom you cannot simply
disassemble without incurring a sinkage                
in your own basin, a poem
for all those who have
dismantled themselves and can
only be divided with themselves or equal love;

a poem for those who have reached a truce
with their own ruin and don’t foist it on others,    
who never whisper into the ears of history
and don’t fidget in embarrassment,
a poem for those whose breath
was once mud and was lava, it was
stone and it was ash;

a poem for those whose hands let a torrent of ink
flow through them and let the river
give final shape to its banks;

a poem for those whose bodies
have experienced the cold onrush of ants, crusades
of alien poetry, and finally a new life,
a different word and a different body
which is love and is tenacity.


II.  

A poem for those who have never trampled grass
to see what soil it grows from, for those who don’t lean  
on someone else’s or a silenced voice,    
because afraid for their patch of land –
for the kingdom at the end-point of a toothpick.

Neither for those dangling from the acid pines of pride,
nor for those undernourished or overfed, who spend
half their lives slyly filling their deficit with other people’s stanzas and
the other half subtracting what they have acquired of this foreign balance;
neither is it for martyrs, weary poets,                      
nor those who
apparently, one day, will, but have never managed to so far,
O, misery, this poem is not for
cork stoppers that block a bottle’s throat
and crumble there, ruining best vintage wine.

This poem is here and now,
and only for those who deserve it;
for those who, here and
now, understand it,
and not those
who might see it come aglow                            
in the crackling dark of 30 to 90 years,
if not even more, when I am everywhere dispersed
and nowhere as buoyant and full
of life as now.
Neither is it for those who keep pouncing on eternity,
from which they, at intervals, as dustmen or executioners,
throw other stronger and more fundamental voices
onto the rubbish heap of forgetfulness.
Je m’en fous. Ha!


III.

You must run your head against a brick wall,
not knowing when the wall will rise
or if your head will take it.
Not against the polystyrene, a torch in your hand,
or against a guarded door
left ajar, not with
an ally or in twos, not
through the coefficient of water
or honey, not
barefoot across dew-covered moss or red-hot coals,
your gaze fixed on the stars, no.
It won’t do.

All of this comes later.
You must go with your own head through the time wall of a word
out of the toughest concrete and out at the other end –
because only when there’s something left over,
only if there’s really something left over –
this poem is for you.

Pesem za tiste, ki si jo zaslužijo

Pesem za tiste, ki si jo zaslužijo

I.

Zares je to pesem samo za tiste, ki
si jo zaslužijo:

pesem za tiste, katerih črte na podplatih so
legende, prepisane
s starih zemljevidov, z vsako
netočnostjo ali zabrisom
zgodovinsko preoblikovane, znamenja, ki  
jih danes vidimo kot gorske verige, speče
na velikih tektonskih prelomnicah;

pesem za tiste, ki jih ni mogoče preprosto
razstaviti na komponente, ne da bi
terjal ugrez lastne doline, pesem
za vse  tiste, ki so
se samorazstavili in so
deljivi le s seboj ali z enakovredno ljubeznijo;

pesem za tiste, ki so sklenili premirje s svojimi
ruševinami in jih ne podstavljajo drugim, ki
nikdar ne šepetajo v uho zgodovine
in se v zadregi ne prestavljajo z noge na nogo,
pesem za tiste, ki so nekoč dihali s sapo, ki je
bila blato in je bila lava, ki je bila
kamen in je bila pepel;

pesem za tiste, skozi katerih roke
je šlo črnilo kot hudournik in je struga
dokončno oblikovala bregove;  

pesem za tiste, skozi katerih telo je šlo mrzlo
drhtenje mravelj in križarska vojska
tujih verzov in na koncu novo življenje,
drugačna beseda in drugo telo,
ki je ljubezen in je nepopustljivost.


II.

Pesem za tiste, ki nikoli niso poteptali trave, da
bi videli v kakšni prsti raste, za tiste, ki ne slonijo
na tujem ali zamolčanem glasu v
bojazni za svoje krpe zemlje –
za kraljestvo na konici zobotrebca.

Ne za tiste, ki bingljajo s kislih borovcev oholosti,
ne za podhranjene in preobjedene, ki
pol življenja skrivoma prištevajo tuje kitice k svojem manku in
v naslednji polovici odštevajo prirastek tuje bilance od svoje;
ne za mučenike, naveličane poete,
ali tiste, ki
baje nekoč bodo, pa nikoli zdaj še niso,
o mizerabilija,  ne za
plutovinaste zamaške, ki se zabašejo v grlo steklenice,
se tam zdrobijo in pokvarijo vrhunsko vino.

Ta pesem je tukaj in zdaj in
je samo za tiste, ki si jo zaslužijo;
za tiste, ki jo tukaj
in zdaj razumejo, ne za tiste, ki jim bodo
posamezne besede začele svetiti
v prasketajoči temi čez 30 ali 90 let
ali še kasneje, ko bom razpršena povsod
in nikjer tako živa in polna
življenja, kot danes.
Ne za tiste, ki naskakujejo večnost in
poskrbijo, da se iz nje ob točno določenih
intervalih smetarjev ali eksekutorjev
na smetišče pozabe zmeče druge,
močnejše in bolj temeljne glasove.
Je m’en fous. Ha!


III.

Treba je z glavo skozi zid in
pri tem ne vedeti, kdaj se bo zid pojavil
in ne ali je glava dovolj trpežna.
Ne skozi stiropor z baklo v roki,
ne skozi priprta vrata, ki jih je nekdo
priškrnil in jih varuje, ne z
zaveznikom ali v paru, ne
skozi koeficient vode,
ali medu, ne
bos po rosnem mahu ali žerjavici
s pogledom uperjenim v zvezde, ne.
Ne zadostuje.

Vse to pride kasneje.
Treba je iti s svojo glavo skozi časovni zid besede
iz najtršega betona in na drugi strani ven –
ker samo v primeru, če kaj ostane
samo, če res kaj ostane –
je ta pesem tudi zate.