TOWERS OF KARST Poem by Barbara Korun

Noon embraced me
around the waist,
black traces of earth
on my white skin.

A red heart of flesh
pulsed, pulsed
beneath the horizon;
a small mouth
gulping, gulping
voraciously.

Out of the dark sun
a tear fell, smarting,
onto the white rock
into the rock cleft,
into two, into three.

A lizard flicked
into a crevice of the heart,
tickled the sky's aorta;
beneath a red-hot vulva
a key blazed,
a white flash.

In a magic circle
beneath the horizon of happiness
in a thicket of underground waters
in the twilight of desire
a child lay sleeping.