WE CRUMBLE EVEN without you, who are Poem by Miroslav Kirin

God is thinking about me and eating me.
Tomaž Šalamun
WE CRUMBLE EVEN without you, who are
looking at us, overwhelmed with envy.

You're not sweating, and your blood isn't
dripping. You're as transparent as

our smile, granted from you
to replace hope so that we could

imagine joy every time we are
trembling from some misfortune. And you

would like to suffer, wouldn't you? Your
hands are too clean, aren't they? It

would be very nice to get to know
the mushiness of mud, the heat of blood pouring

all over the palms, spouting from the hole
in the forehead. Or, suppose you

started arguing with my wife? Would
you stand a chance? I know, you're wordy,

but what's the use of your words
when anyone uses them in

a different way? Please, do admit, you would
lose the battle with her. She would make no answer,

and you wouldn't know which of the words you
could use to drive her out that unbearable silence.

After all, you haven't managed to drive us out of our pain;
we're still in there, stuck, having trust in you.

As usual, we're probably wrong. Has it
ever worked? No. Actually, during all this time

you've been eating this world, and you're not
surfeited with it. You're particularly fond of

the fresh ones, whose eyes never close and who
stick out their tongues to you, whose noses

are jutted out, up to the sky, where they
tickle your soles. I know, you would like

best to trample down on them, squash them
just like. Well, you're too lazy for that, too.

You can live with it. And say: I've tolerated
it, suffered pain, here's the truth I'm going to

bestow upon you. And then you stop speaking,
for silence is a dogma that can be easily

argued about. When, in the course of argument,
someone's belly is slashed, they say: "They lost

their mind." And the argument about the role of the reason
resumes till a half of its participants are bored to death.

Then they are buried outside the cemetery, just like.
No eulogies. Just the mourning parties dressed

in the robes of opaque silence. With cynical flowers
in the lapels. With elastic plasters on

mouths and legs. With uneven earth under them.
They stumble all the time and disappear

as in Argentine. Whoever comes back, becomes
awfully cynical because he has eaten all the flowers

from the lapels of his friends. Who are, you see, no
longer friends because they hold their tongues,

although they have disappeared. Pardon me, but they're not
dead, they are able to talk! Well, they are called upon

to tell the truth. There can't be any excuse for that,
apart from the excuse you've bestowed upon them.

You're so generous when you grant us silence.
It's at your disposal, you say, do whatever you can do.

Anyway, words are not for you, I'm their sole creator
and the only owner. I've been written down in your letters

and I'm everything you yearn for. Your love begins and
ends in me. So does your speech. No one else will ever

be able to say anything because they're not me.
I am you, a heap of crumbles without my share in it.

I am a lamp swinging inside the ice cube:
I illumine the love of fish.