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 May 2018
Adasyev
For you, my heaven and my hell,
I sing about me and the world as well,
about the delusions and comedy,
my desires that howl in a black night's dream.

And the tears come by twilight,
but in the sun my song is wild,
with a glitter burning still,
like two stars dancing in the sea.
From Melancholic Journey (1906)
 Jan 2018
Adasyev
There are dangers of hell
             keep waiting
                   till they are felt

There are dangers of hell

You can forget anything
             never forget it all
Devoted to John Cale.
From "Rok krysy" (2008).
 Jan 2018
Adasyev
A few blooms in Bohemia
for your hair do a duty
and make their red heavier
to fit the brown of your beauty.

But how many gallows
morals have built along the trees!
Joyful sin, tell me, in their shadow,
are flowers allowed to please?

The burdock and nettles
are growing as every year
and so people of Protectus settle
with their tracts everyone's ear.

Praying is just a waste
as it was at the time I was born.
The blooming aloe is my taste
of your black hair adorned.
From Melancholic Journey (1906)
 Jan 2018
Adasyev
Life stories of other people
are more important than
life story of ours

Life stories of other people
are easier to tell than
life story of ours
which we are unable to say anything about
and so we are unable to say anything about
our life story

The valves
are opening in our hearts

The valves
are opening in our hearts

Please
try to comprehend this part
Published 2008. From "Rok krysy"
 Jan 2018
Adasyev
Many people act
like if they had not been born yet. But at that time
William Burroughs was asked by a student
whether he believed in an afterlife
and answered
"And how do you know you haven't died yet?"
From Holub's 1982 collection "Naopak" (On The Contrary)
 Jan 2018
Adasyev
Where do the wrecks of our children lie????????????????????????????????
Lukewarm as a silent draught in saturated heads
Yellowed in smoothness
                      of apples with silk so ancient and in vermouth
                                                        ­                                          so cheap
                                         mixed with the chlorine water of the city
where do the wrecks of our children lie
                                   lukewarm
                                                      & yellowy
                                                         ­               & tremulous
just like an archangel's gesture
which we use for forcing them to leave us
for ages or for never

Yes, our expelled white and green and yellow cry
thirstily yells in the desert of bedsheets
and with the skin in a sweat up to our neck
we struggle for that smell in the air with beginning
of decay
which belongs to our
doubled loneliness
From Stop-time (published 1969)
 Jan 2018
Adasyev
Water is reeked with nicotine
The souls are reeked with Ginsberg
but the heads and the thoughts have both pungent smell like
hot rooster comb flowers
I slept last time the day before yesterday
I saw the ****** Mary so beautiful
in that glow of blue & gold
                                           neons of Bethlehem
thumbing a lift near a cadillac with CD plate
& the jazz was caroling in wet sand
there were twelve bars in the honour of that boy
who has to come here one day finally, ****
he has to come just for jamming in this world
as it's said he could /!/ get all that mess of ours
off ourselves gentlemanly playing the part.
From Stop-time (published 1969)
 Jan 2018
Adasyev
Dark flows down to the street's pools
The blotting paper of sky in grey
has imprints of cyclamen roses
Right there on the street they are lynching
with a welding torch the rests
of this night I have spent with a walk
to assure myself that I live still
Maybe this is the morning
that will give an amnesty
to all the time barred loves
from Stop-time (published 1969)
 Jan 2018
Adasyev
Hall, how you are full of ceiling!
It goes where the flooring is
Land prepares for giant flooding
and drinks the palms of oases

Hold the things before they will fly
Today's swirl isn't mute
Get tied down with endlessly high
torment to your inside root

To your cisterns of claims that die
being pecked through liver's shell
by fierce eagle which would **** dry
the water, drinks, pail as well.
Written May 29, 1941

Original in Czech:
https://cs.wikisource.org/wiki/Zcest%C3%AD/Bou%C5%99ka
 Jan 2018
Adasyev
Hey, lament, if I may call you so
would you come here to bring your sorrow?

Fragrance, do you have things to tell?
I would breathe in your poisoned smell.

How many curtains! But none that hangs.
I feel my head, lungs and heart have pangs.

That's for the drinks I had to take.
Maybe for all that I can take.

For fasting there is a believer.
I stubbornly think of a dinner.

I'm hungry! Who cares if I ate
the tears and the fear and the hate.

I'm also thirsty. I'll drink my pail
of blizzard, rainstorm and the hail

and after getting tired from it
I fall asleep on this couplet.

But lament, why am I saying so
would you come here to bring your sorrow?
Written March 31,  1941

Original in Czech:
https://cs.wikisource.org/wiki/Zcest%C3%AD/Kocovina
 Jan 2018
Adasyev
Look over there, The moon has fled
well she is not kind — she is bad
just hidden from us in a clouds' cache
and nudging them and it starts to splash
with acrid rain on the darkness
of the roofs with breath of softness
tinging a house where the sleep could stay
sleep, wherever you have slipped away
all those dreams, they have become wet
the rock is sighing it has let
the ravine to take one stone falling
and meantime here I, I am singing.

Never mind that I am in a jail
because I know the morning won't fail
to help me when it grows to inflame
out of the ripe night which keeps the same
also for the next tomorrow.
Indeed they seem to overflow
these mornings, still in a drowsy vein
as raising the head from breast of rain
which fell in love with them and shines
and to honour both with my lines
while for me a note of wind is blown
tell me, why I shouldn't sing on my own.
Written June 16, 1941

Original in Czech:
https://cs.wikisource.org/wiki/Zcest%C3%AD/Sv%C3%ADt%C3%A1n%C3%AD
 Jan 2018
Adasyev
By faced tenderness
so had the brooks let you ride
between the shores that you did miss
to landscapes of night
by faced tenderness

Still wandering and unseen
you had been caught by the lands
sunk near the hidden scene
in flooding of dark, in the flood without ends
still wandering and unseen

A lover is left at the railing
we don't know there no tender face
for she broke tenderness once by stealing
the poor mortal ladies' waves of their grace

But I had heard someone said
you spread out your legs and made them sold
to the water sprites who felt too cold

A small pittance of love not so bad
was helping you until your death.
Written June 29, 1939

Original in Czech:
https://cs.wikisource.org/wiki/%C4%8C%C3%ADtanka_jaro/Utonul%C3%A1
 Jan 2018
Adasyev
Things would become full of life again
and all the songs, time's arias
would follow as before to sustain
things hidden within us

If someone just shed that heaviness
which has imprinted our touch
and finishes sewing the coat's stitches
knowing now it doesn't hurt much

Just not to pull it on the body
as you are used to in the frost
wearing long sleeves when February
has brought love that tends to exhaust

Feel a touch where the cloth has left it
where there is the bare skin lying
where there is no place for a jacket
(it is too large for the living)
Written February 28, 1939

Original in Czech:
https://cs.wikisource.org/wiki/%C4%8C%C3%ADtanka_jaro/A_odho%C4%8F_%C5%A1at_sv%C5%AFj%E2%80%A6

— The End —