The Blue Tower (7 page)

 

Who would have thought they were so scribbled over.
The paint has peeled off.
The walls are heavy and wide.

 

I divide Africa along its head, so we'll all be warm.
The loaf hits the platter sliced, just
a bit sliced.

 

Blueberries, strawberries, an appetite, shutters.
Set down your sleeves, set down your sleeves, set down
your class, the foam around your mouth.

 

Do you recall the pilgrims on Ptuj Hill that
Mihelič painted, the candies you devoured
and the little vinyl Boy Scout blackboards?

 

Manure smells of nobility, not a stable.
My pages are all over the place, with
ants walking on them.

 

Today is June 28, Saint Vitus's Day. What have we postmarked?
Babies carry kindling.
A pelican fans warm embers up to its waist,

 

so that our anthem can crash more dramatically on the rocks
of the Adriatic. Nabokov doesn't recall this,
he came here later.

 

I want up on the gallows.
I'm approached by a gentleman who
also wants up on the gallows.

 

I've been approached by ladies who had the most beautiful
hands in this or that city.
When did I miss my descent?

Tar of hoplites
Timava, turn round
on a pram, at a car, at a fence
the famished door of the sun, rain
savages clean up after themselves
Vikrče in a wigwam, out, five fingers, one missing
five fingers, sticky titmice,
missing FARO

 

light

 

mommy's cramped spaces

 

no bookworm, no bookish vase
test tubes behind gilt doors
ropes, pikes
whispering buona sera
ranks bounce, a hunting dog
iodine, iodine, iodine, the bellet gets pitchy
it runs like an animal-god, a train-bird
probability preserved
a hail of departed
dandelion dodge

 

terrine, timeo take off
disheveled hair
ree gee dee vee dee mo
a bow to the cricket sky

 

tug tug tug

 

kate sacking off

 

december sip sip sip

 

howls into a magnetic heart
che devono fare
spin threads
teach olive trees
bits of the next day in john the fireman
resoled auras

 

june bug has countless coats

 

sesame to the prince of the door
to hack out a verb with a tschor polenta
you live on the tiny grass
you live and don't hack out verbs
live birth the arm rots

 

winged well-drained bessarabians
came to the house
lifted the silt
i stand in for happiness
   age of pleistocenestimated seed
an expanded creature
supple water lily, crotch of beanpole
the living are fine with a corpse
a clod in a granite flute's studio
venus, bright goldfinch

 

   
Donnini, autumn 2002