Far Within Us #6
From the wrinkle between my brows
You watch till day breaks
On my face
The waxen night
Is beginning to singe
The fingers of dawn
Black bricks
Have already tiled
The whole dome of the sky
Trans. by Anne Pennington
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poem by Vasko Popa
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Far Within Us #5
The nights are running out of darkness
Steel branches grasp
The arms of passers-by
Only anonymour chimneys
Are free to walk the streets
Which slice across our sleeplessness
In the gutters our stars decay
Trans. by Anne Pennington
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poem by Vasko Popa
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Far Within Us #3
Unquiet you walk
Along the rims of my eyes
On the invisible grating
Before your lips
My naked words shiver
We steal moments
From the unheeding iron saws
Your hands sadly
Flow into mine
The air is impassable
Trans. by Anne Pennington
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poem by Vasko Popa
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Wedding
Each strips his own skin
Each bares his own constellation
Which has never seen the night
Each fills his skin with rocks
And plays with it
Lit by his own stars
Who doesn't stop till dawn
Who doesn't bat an eyelid or fall
Earns his own skin
(This game is rarely played)
poem by Vasko Popa
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Far Within Us #4
Green gloves rustle
On the avenue's branches
The evening carries us under its arm
By a path which leaves no trace
The rain falls on its knees
Before the fugitive windows
The yards come out of their gates
And stand looking after us
Trans. by Anne Pennington
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poem by Vasko Popa
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Give Me Back My Rags #1
Give me back my rags
My rags of pure dreaming
Of silk smiling of striped foreboding
Of my cloth of lace
My rags of spotted hope
Of burnished desire of chequered glances
Of skin from my face
Give me back my rags
Give me when I ask you nicely
Trans. by Anne Pennington
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poem by Vasko Popa
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Hide-And-Seek
Someone hides from someone else
Hides under his tongue
The other looks for him under the earth
He hides on his forehead
The other looks for him in the sky
He hides inside his forgetfulness
The other looks for him in the grass
Looks for him looks
There's no place he doesn't look
And looking he loses himself
poem by Vasko Popa
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Anne Pennington
Until her last breath she enlarges
Her Oxford house
Built in Slavonic
Vowels and consonants
She polishes the corner-stones
Until their Anglo-Saxon shine
Begins to sing
Her death is like a short breath-stop
Under the distant limetrees of her friends
Trans. by Peter Jay, Anthony Rudolf, and Daniel Weissbort
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Give Me Back My Rags
Just come to my mind
My thoughts will scratch out your face
Just come into my sight
My eyes will start snarling at you
Just open your mouth
My silence will smash your jaws
Just remind me of you
My remembering will paw up the ground under your feet
That's what it's come to between us
Trans. by Anne Pennington
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poem by Vasko Popa
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Give Me Back My Rags #11
I've wiped your face off my face
Ripped your shadow off my shadow
Leveled the hills in you
Turned your plains into hills
Set your seasons quarreling
Turned all the ends of the world from you
Wrapped the path of my life around you
My impenetrable my impossible path
Just try to meet me now
Trans. by Anne Pennington
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poem by Vasko Popa
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