Five Poems from "Opera Buffa"

by Tomaž Šalamun

Translated from the Slovene by Matthew Moore

[LET’S MARBLE THE MESS OF FLESH]

Let’s marble the mess of flesh.
Let’s put on his briefs.

I raised mine eyes upward.
I saw the closet before me.

Thus powdered the stream, to life and all joy.

TO STAND ON TIPTOES

Frugal rival. To stand on tiptoes with heavenly
Aida. Oh, lotion, slick

expert, fluted in the sarcophagus
and the inspection tent.

Oh, lotion, flies incline on daubs
from acqua modificata.

Elephants are achromatic. The porters are sore.
Rose land wreathes you.

I see a faery fly into a sand dune.
That wind can sure play

the grasses. Orality? Who can coin the scythe?
Who can hear that saw?

I shall wait for the lady to return,
to punch in after her dinner hour.

BILKY WITH A BRIDGE

He jumped it. He hit the gas. He spat coordinates
and left. He smashed bricks with his hand, so what.

I’m a sentence. I’m the hireling for the bookmaker.
With optical plastic

carburetor. I open it up over the
sprayed cabbages. God is from

Jocasta. Praxiteles wears bees. In
Paris, a dark footbridge perishes.

There. Hooked? Did you cut the deal with the snail?
You are the cinema room.

Next reel. Moses lies on a haystack and
says: Bilky with a bridge,

and repeats the title. Faith is liced and
layered. A classmate starts to warm up.

FRAGMENTS GIVEN EYES

He who creaks embodies God with his
feet. The rib is a bud.

Veins fill with blood,
hare lips with

cotton. Bacon surrounded the horizon
with masks. The sun

just now birthed my children. Yellow
animals are hard and

visual. Yellow animals
purify the trees.

To kill an elephant, to build
a home. Kocmur! Your

skin is burned! Why! Just go, just
go, take your drama, to the moon!

WHEN THE OWL WASHES THE CANVAS

To open the faucets, Anastasia,
will bring you to naught

nowhere. We watched the heat.
A figure is a face, a part,

motif. Sulfur on a barrel. A distance
roosters advertise. A gull

screams. The child sleeps. A willow
leaf decides to sail. The man

parts his golden hair behind
the bay head, and strolls

outside the hotel. I dreamed
what Andraž read,

out loud. Then he slumped between
pillows. The dream is gone.