Thaumaturgy of a Decent Dragonfly

 

A large dragonfly whipped by my window
and, on a swing, she chose her repose
to spread a frothiest shade of black,
a gauzy game of her ready arms!

Glad and restless to raise ardent whirl
with legerdemain to take one’s breath,
catching fair dreams of iridescence
among sunbeams with her winging fan.

There she thus sits, finely spreading
a translucent charm—just as opaque—
turning beauty into mist and daze.

O that lissome whim of willing yearning!
O that little wounding wraith! What hoses
can she pull—on her clearsighted play!

Apollinaris’ Morning Walk

 

Smoke of morning rays
caught in gauze
of ebbing mist —
thus in unison all

quivers and dithers
on time’s inmost cusp,
waving through the eyes
on a wizard’s wand.

Come and see yourself
this brief séance
so carefully dosed

so that a pharmacist
and an artist appear as one —
with an act of delicate shock.

So Differently Taste Wines, Bodies, Bread, Even Books In the Summer and South

 

Summer's sleeveless blues
and nude degrees earned—
how do they grow such vine
from sun and earth,

so eager to be pressed,
even though one cannot be
sufficiently prinked with shade
or stay enough overdressed

in beads of pearling sweat
and their unctuous sheen?

And still, on the winding way
of such a drink and taste,
vine boughs grow all gnarled,

not unlike the gargoyles
by those exalted tiles and eaves,
with their tips and heels

well tied to blood and flesh
to be offered to a pious mouth
from within the covers

of a book and holy Mass,
where the church holds
its perfumed navel as a cup,

and those devils on the outside
surely pour in—like the builders
whom Solomon himself,

with the harem and the Queen
of Sheba, invited and let in
on the secret over which

wing-clad dames kneel,
thus offering a bath,
or even a whole temple—

beth, lineage and house—
with pillars reaching
for the sky, like bread

pushed down into wine.

O, didn't Plutarch already
tell us that Osiris and Bacchus
were rather the same and one,

and so were Dionysus,
the cheery one, and grim Hades,
in that one little verse

from weeping Heraclitus
that reads like a footnote
when a scholar needs to hide,

saving the rest of his book
for less diligent eyes
to see by passing by?

But what else could
that God of Death
wish for—or ever need?

What Could the Russian Soul and Love Ever Mean to Czech Anticommunists And Anti-Russian Liberals?

 

From time to time, once in a while,

in Café Slavia we would sit—
Rudolf Matys—and only now
I came to see, to know—

all that time my companion was
both Matys, hence Matthew,
“Gift of God,” and Rudolf,
that is to say, a “Famous Wolf,”

a strange and distant kin
to an Adolf, once a visitation
from the West in my dream
near Arkansas’ Little Rock.

And among other things
he asked, “How is Mr. Křovíčko,”
meaning George W. Bush
(for in Czech bush is křoví,
a křovíčko is little bush,
and křoví evokes

something, someone
who is hiding—skrývá—
“behind bushes”—
which could be
even a wolf himself.

Wine watered our talk.

And we even talked of Onegin,
and, to Rudolf, neither he
nor Pushkin meant too much,
except that Holan tried to mock
Pushkin’s rhyming scheme
but then let it be—

and all that novel’s talk
of Russian soul and love
Rudolf cleaned up
in one little detached coda

about what he missed:

instead of just sending
Onegin away from her lap
with a note of proud,
yet aching love,

Tatiana should have
used a clue Pushkin himself
offered out for sale—

when he wrote that, in his gaze,
a woman’s foot, especially if
in public under a table’s cloth,
beats each Diana’s breast
and any Flora’s cheeks
(Onegin I.XXXII):

so why shouldn’t—or didn’t—
the lady, as a men’s and poetry’s
good student, learn how to bob
and move Onegin, that well-bred devil,
with nothing—but the meter
of her toes?

Human Souls After Rain and Before Wind

 

After rain,

the sky clears

but already

beneath

 

where our breath

and feet pass,

earth exhales

water that fell

 

back to the sky.

But that rain

falling from above

is life to trees and grass,

 

and flowers bloom

like colored sounds

on the ends

of playing flutes.

 

Thus, in turn,

pipes of scented bloom

send on the trail

of mist and cloud

 

their elusive breath

that fuses into breeze

until it bears wind

that brings back rain.