The Blue Tower by Tomaz Salamun Page B

won’t get out here,
drowns. He swims and swims, can’t swim across. Three paces
south with a pistol to his head. There is no decent water.
Heat eats his fiancée’s breastbone. Greasy paper is left,
sausages, train cars. What sort of veil has been drawn across
you? What did Irina’s two hundred dogs do in
Odessa? Where do you have your little fingers, on the buds or on the
canon? All it takes is for the strut to get worn and the
sail will burst. Death seems. It sags, hides
its spraying equipment, and beckons. Here I am,
great golden hen. I’m yours, great golden hen.

THAT’S HOW MANY MIGHTY HEAVEN WILL ENDURE
Janjica, Janjica, how do I get close to you?
How do I hear your bent paw? Tomatito plays
Spain. Pupae crawl onto people.
The angle is photographed from branches. Anne is coming
by train. Shall we go? Shall we go? Are the roads
crossed out? From the brooder to quiet workshops
where the clocks creak. Will the cypress fade? The coupon is
servus.

Will the stone drink strychnine for people?
Why aren’t you shaken? I lie in the bathtub
until after sunset one hundred stars
light up in the sky. Droplets of sweat that
drip down my arms in the sauna. Nothing. Slowly.
With a drawing. As many droplets as I
can endure, that’s how many mankind will endure.

TITLE STILL PENDING
I palaksh around like a little Gypsy. I scrub three ribs
and get stuck. You’ll scrub quite a few ribs
yet, just relax, with switches. With your eyes, with a fly, with leaves.
My complexion hums. A linden leaps into a new moon. It lifts up pamphlets.
The hollow ball of the earth falls to pieces. Whatever you water isn’t drunk.
A panel board dewy head, leather head. Billions of pieces of
birds cast a spell. Will the shah absorb grain? Will
Robert Minhinnick ever publish Poetry of Wales?
Chamois will overgrow the transversal and freeze like a statue.
No one will be able to get past its fur.
Eyes come falling from the joints like some tiny
grape turds. Will lime ever comfort the
bristling wood? Brown, yellow, shoes with rubber. And at
the end, a haystack, a waterstack, Pont Mirabeau.

DONNINI
In San Pietro di Cascia.
To look at Masaccio.
    Â 
In the butter of a huge linen hall
a hen kindles
Andersen’s red shoe.
    Â 
It thinks of brooding.
Be on my commanding hill and shut down my knitteries.
Let them keep watch. Let the tulip give meat.
    Â 
Where did that sultan live, who lived near
the upper part of the red tulip’s frayed
flag?
    Â 
Bless you, cube.
If a unicorn stopped to the right,
the car couldn’t get around it.

FLORENZA
Il gnoco.
The upper dishwashing shift. Laure is sad
from the fluff. Juan moves around like a shadow.
Rocks dust Lipica. We fall with Ludwig’s head.
Dry land. Sarah. I wake up in my T-shirt. They lifted
me up on a pulley, in silk. Do you sway when you slam
into the cliff walls? What does that do to your
bone prints? They put ointment on the little skins. Stored,
bound, cropped them.
Chiama mi.
I’ll ride forth at
the fox hunt, from under the hide. Here’s the spot where
Browning signed. I’m fond of Procacci. Pathway, pathway,
Bello

Sguardo. Ho mangiato il farro. Mi ha piaciuto

molto.
You, made of fresh moving body parts, the sun’s
shining again. We folded up the buttonhole.
We gave, and gave, and gave, and gave, not there, and gave.

PERSIA
When I jumped on the sieve, the sieve
got sick. The word departed from the flesh and
became the fruit of Nicodemus. No one is free
of gentle bonds, buttons and ribbons
excepted. We dug them in pearlike flutters.
From there a short jump to a branch. Johnny Weissmuller,
such a well-stitched tarp, where do you see these now? We turned
gristle into myriads. Into mush. Into pharaohs.
Into Isfahan, where the square had no water. Into: let the
moon bang its knees or bang the stairs.
Do you hear how it’s emptied enormous fields with chisels
and introduced acqua alta? Beatrice, Pascali,
Nono, speakers, wrapped in green and