[he galloped out of his final dream] Poem by Tsead Bruinja

he galloped out of his final dream
like a rusty knight on a white-washed horse
with a rigid dick and tidings for his wife
of the joy he'd found in fantasies of her

lovingly she washed his screeching suit in a bath
of coke with whalebone brushes in callused hands
she massaged the white from his open stallion's body
helped him panting onto his horse and showed him the way

his sharp bones almost poking through the frail skin
beneath his paunch rattling against the inside
of his gleaming suit of armour like a spoke-
driven peg on a shoe-polish tin

a ripe apple rolled in the box over the bacon sandwich
from one side to the other his lance was sanded smooth
the points sharp he sucked the peppermint on his tongue
and rubbed oil into his saddle

until the sails broke him I didn't want to hear
a word about a world around us I wanted to walk
together with his fiercely spinning mills

until the hot horizon

Translated from the author's Dutch translation by David Colmer