Translated by Max Nemtsov

Apples for Gods

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4

the earth is crippled and we’re templed. the date-plum’s plump and we’re silently hiding the fact that the sung songs never brought us calm and no one heard and even god’s unable to prove his own presence. the war is able to prove anything. the war’s the god’s mill. the war’s the god. the war’s special purpose persimmon. the war makes legless out of cripples and crackles stealthy. so what d’you think vanya why is the temple of the bloom plundered and where did the birds disappear to?

sleep tight vanya replies at night a sweet lollipop will come out of you. the candyfloss from a flow that neither water nor blood can be drunk from. a salty mine of faith where the coaly death is mined.

but is the death black like crude oil? and is its dough formless? its meal is like moil. but vanya but vanya? why are you keeping silent little vanya? you can speak. you went to school.

but the dead can’t speak. so forgive me mama.

5

the widow of night wants very much what? and iesus in soporific cosmos promised what? a flag post. a poem post. very much wants:

to take food to take a breather to take a smoke

to go home to go into the stomach of the night and shout

it’s time to go home it’s time to go home it’s time to go home

again like back then again

it’s time to go home to the grave yard

6 at the wareyard a lot of things accumulated, and all those things are of course not needed by anyone and everything is finished. so, let’s drink the cheapest beer and forget all about it. for even the sky is blue as if no one has died. the sky is white as if no one has frozen in the snow. the sky is gray as if no one has strangled himself engorging grayness and rawness. the sky is black like the face of a baby not born at war. the baby could have killed mother war at birth with its birth and remained an all-around orphan like the round world. and everything would have come around again to the very beginning where the baby screamed. the pier of life was shot out from dragonfly nonchalance and the buzzing of bees. what is left for us but to put death together like a puzzle the box with a reliable surprise inside to the uppermost shelf of the obliterated web-abluted wareyard? children’s money small senses insensibilities coffees for one a long goodbye for two or an old piggybank with the expired small change of time? we don’t have anything to put there for everything has burnt and cracked moreover the door to the wareyard isn’t opened by anyone

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8

the wasteland grows. the plaster flowers. the pastor flourishes. the bedding fades. the pastel dissolves. the scalpel trembles. everything changes. only your name is still unknown to me. but I don’t even try to guess. I don’t have a name myself. myself I’m an all-around mystery. no one needs a solution to it. the sun heads for landing. a garden bed drowns in the sunset’s flame. the wings of woods enswathe the feathers of a cage with darkness. the world is still woven but this time with dreams instead of words or gods.

speaking of words. I still try to assemble letters into something upstanding like a lighthouse. something starting right with a capital letter yet the hooks the eyelets the little diagonals don’t yield nohow. not surprising that. where could we take our names from if our name is a lonely death after the war?

9

the grass’ days are numbered. who where when and how did the calculation? do you remember how we trampled the bones of the crystal grass and it kept silent? it was silent although it wanted to scream. the crackle is the absolute evil under the feet. the crackle outside or the crackle inside? but anyway: do you remember how we trampled the bones of the crystal grass and you kept silent? our only memories from that night are empty cider cans. for what is the emptiness but the little cider cans? possibly you’re that emptiness that keeps silent intermittently. you are that emptiness and I love you. I want you. and I love flowers. at the graveyard.

10

an apple tree. it was an apple tree. the crucifixion is an apple. commas are pits. the skin is metal for nails. the wood is undoubtedly the tree. and the flame is undoubtedly the spring blooming.

overcome the day: further into the night everything will start again anew. everything will rise. apart from love.