The Blue Tower by Tomaz Salamun

AT BARONESS BEATRICE MONTI DELLA CORTE VON REZZORI’S
An etching, a beautiful white etching, you’re devoid of people,
devoid of bodies. What if we started flapping, or spinning like a
propeller, we would invite frogs and plums and sailors’ earrings
    Â 
so the air wouldn’t be thin, or the place where we’re going. Will there
be action? Will lightning flash? Will there be phantasms? Dropping
trees, just wires quickly twisted in a ball? Frank!
    Â 
I eat you, after so long, after, let’s say, Primož’s
intermediation and what John says about where to plant the stakes.
John doesn’t put it like that, those are my words,
    Â 
John would like to come to Slovenia, but we are in
the buds, the fringe, the grass, the beech leaves, and I could ram Maximilian
Dorner into a beech trunk almost, look how pale
    Â 
he is, you don’t realize how much you’ve drunk, says Metka,
she always shows up and saves me, since I’ve had her I’ve been calm,
I have a home, nothing will blow me apart again, we’ll die, for sure,
    Â 
but all of us will die, that’s the nicest part, when it’s time of course,
not now, hey, the metaphors are all gone, metaphors are
the prow of a shipwreck, a swollen member, the dissemination
    Â 
of Flemings, they really have come up, but where are we, I’m still
spinning that propeller, summoning the muse,
obviously, because in the night I got up and retyped
    Â 
(saved to disk) what Peter and I had done. Paced
the rooms like a hawk and whispered, are you coming? are you?
I was a beast and snatched him from Tanya,
    Â 
Tanya listens to Rufus, I also adore him, that time when I
drove Joshua to Lucca, we listened to him constantly, I
think we’re off the ground, at least that’s how my I perceives it,
    Â 
here I am now, Beatrice, furious for having wasted
hours and hours with that third-rate professor,
a really overstuffed reputation, and hardly heard of
    Â 
Grischa. Beatrice was the most beautiful woman of her
time and if I’d been hanging around Milan back then,
forget Tatjana, forget Nina, not even Monica Vitti, and
    Â 
even she dried up, hanging onto Antonioni,
hey, there are no metaphors here, Jure would be pleased,
no he wouldn’t, this would be too frivolous for him, we’re left
    Â 
where we are, we remain, we’ve had a nice life,
we have one. I saw a spider while I shaved,
le matin, le chagrin, I’ve got to get something out,
    Â 
so that something is left for people if they call me up
today. How, the gifted ones constantly ask me,
how? Hey, Beatrice is bathing, I can hear the water splash.

“I DON’T LIKE PROUST, HE DIDN’T HAVE ENOUGH SEX,” DIRAN SAYS
The mosque is a model of corporate shams,
Žiga shleps a hernia onto greenery.
I cattivi
pluck hairs out of their nostrils,
perché

i cattivi, perché non i buoni? I buoni e i

cattivi sono cattolici.

Sure, sure, Diran explains at dinner,
all the English boys at Oxford wanted
to sleep in my bed, and
we did, as innocent as puppies, but as soon as they grew their
first peach fuzz, my penis got bored and I changed orientation.
My mother prayed that I not catch the “English
disease.” Nigeria is homophobic, and
you? It’s late, it’s late, my friend, and now it’s too late.
Both of us are writers, neither one’s a doctor, he also says.

PHARAOHS AND KINGS, KASSEL, PARIS
We had pretty girls and were excellent dancers,
Andro and I. The dual number is disappearing. We slid
over Karst mountains and drove to the sea. Do you remember
Cabiria? The skirts were long and people stared.
Everywhere people made way for you. But in Paris
at your Biennale des jeunes, it was
me
who prowled the night.
It’s nice when young people cry with pleasure and you float and
listen to their sobbing. Robert became gay in the
sacristy, when a bear pounced on him. I reminded him
of that holy man. And who counts the souls that