On Ohio Trails One Can Walk a Dog, a Poem or One’s Faun

 

These nymphs can outlast even death,

ugliness, impotence, or boredom,

but I miss those open soulful fans

of ancient theaters that loved

 

to lean like lovers against mountains

dappled with olives, cicadas, and goats.

The Fall is a good time to let one’s Faun

get out and breathe as the enchanted trees

 

are dropping dresses down by one’s feet,

while the light and rosy arches rise

to strum the colored melodious breeze,

and so these maples, aspens, garnet oaks

 

triumph against time and its chilling sweep

like a stolen gleeful kiss or a poem—

a gem of wonder tripled in a row

when it’s made, then lived and breathed.

 

So let the autumn amorous acquaintance

fit this moment’s mold—unhurried mode

and be and go likewise—low and slow

with your line that pencils a shared track to bliss.

 

Does this relaxed rhythm tick like ancient night

when its miracle would have you transformed

with the ease with which the tuft of furtive fleece,

trimmed right and intimate, can bid to take you in?

 

By the Ohio Window

 

 

Here I am by the window

full of Autumn sliding

down its golden tones

and by Apollinaire

 

and his Bestiaire of souls

that keeps evoking Orpheus

and by Allen Ginsberg too

and his checkered booklet

 

Kaddish and Other Poems

in that tombstone jacket

of which he went searching

for Apollinaire in Père Lachaise

 

like a spider gleaming

with all the strings

round his naked belly

on the granite in the sun

 

and in that miniature eternity

in the city of Paris and St. Dionysus

just before I must have been born

out the uranium mines of Jáchymov,

 

by the Czech Mountains of the Ores.

By this Ohio window where the sky

gets caught in its purest awe

Jeanne Foster serves me

 

her Wild Hesperidean Apples,

and the Beat poet chinwags gently

with Diana Cooper, the last

British bountiful Artemis,

 

fresh from a choir manned

with slightly Baroque boys,

lying in a solid missionary pose

under Phlegon of Tralles

 

and his Books of Marvels

that have all that’s left

of Roman Sibylline

deathless prophecies.

 

And still further down

feminine Hermes

headlong falling

from the sky

 

is pinching Ulysses

from Calypso

who squeezed his knee

vainly with her bare thighs

 

of light and Renaissance,

while Penelope, being served

a ration of ambrosia instead

of her lost, philandering man,

 

is getting ready to show

her beauty, deified now,

to all her 108 suitors

alive for this one last time

 

right out of the brush

of Gerard Lairesse.

But still deeper down

lies the heroic Moor

 

who, part Adonis

and part war-horse,

is always in love

with some lady

 

and who, proudly

ignorant of Plato

like so many these days,

trusts that it’s honorable

 

to cheat, rob, or deceive

by lies all who don’t

worship his own God

from a nursery book

 

(“for an idiot is the one

who is possessed

by the wicked demons”

surrounding such a pious man).

 

 

And by the Heaven Is a Garden

on the top and one hundred pages

Guido Cavalcanti seeks to fulfil

and gently complete himself—

 

So here in this company

I am tucked away

by this Ohio window

in the Deciduous Land

 

that brims with flames

of light and Bromius,

held to precede even

primordial Night

 

and who was just as well

put down by Erato

on their wedding night.

Unless she tried and meant

to put him down to music.

O architektuře socialistického úpadku na Východě a v Čechách (úryvek)

Byla to architektura

co páteř kultury

z myšlenek i kamene,

z prostoru i tvaru,

 

jež řídila, a proto

ukazovala dopředu

směr i osud národu,

i jeho měnící se dům.

 

Architektura sama

je totiž do slova

tektonikou principu,

vládou jeho myšlenky a světla,

 

jeho souladu a řádu,

ducha jeho arkády,

vzepětí, i klenby,

co oživený text,

 

textura, kde se kouzlo koná –

duše nové ztělesnění,

z hloubky ožívající zpět

a rodící se vzhůru.

 

Navzdor bezduchému zásvětí,

kde se kuchtí záměny

principu principy

beze cti a ducha,

 

aby politika choroby

dozrála a znovu troufla si

vysemenit a rozšířit

po zemi svou hnilobu.

 

A tak i stalo se,

když nová mrtvola

pod sebou odkopla si

štokrle – stoličku

 

z odumřelých ideálů,

jež čerpaly hrdinství a sílu

z pravdy, a též z úcty ke člověku,

z duší blízkých a podobných hvězdám.

 

A tak pomalu, podvratně

lež a její rakovina

tající se v hlavách

kotila se v skutky,

 

a s tím jiná kultura i přišla,

placatá, bezduchá a mrtvá,

dopředu již předznamenávající

a ukazující přímo před očima,

 

že slíbená obroda a nová humanita,

zrazené, prodané zeshora,

jsou jen třpyt, pozlátko a obal

a že na místo hrdinů

 

a těch, kdo dobro měli v srdci,

na šíji národa a vlasti

dosedly mršiny a mrchy,

charaktery post mortem –

 

zmrvené, marnivé,

zmařené a mořící,

zmrnavělé – mrňavící,

mrzačící zmrazky.

 

Smrdi, zmrdi, prostituky.

A tak architektura,

nositelka principu,

její Noemovy archy

 

ukazovala v předstihu,

co se plánuje, chystá,

co klube se a rodí,

i co ničí se a hubí,

 

i co přestává a zmírá,

a že režim vypustil již ducha

a že Zeitgeist už zcela jiný vládne,

a to daleko dřív, než politik odkryl

 

svoje ústa – záměry i zrady,

záněty a kazy – lesk a bídu,

líce holých zadnic (anebo naopak?),

však v oblecích s kulatýmim pupky.