“Sleeplessness” in “What We Are When We Are / Kaj smo, ko smo”
Sleeplessness 
Just for a moment I shut my eyes and
Boston tumbles into its harbor.
The eighties come to visit me in neon
colours and roll me into a cigarette.
Puerto Rico is tired of the Caribbean.
It sinks like a submarine and surfaces
in the middle of the Mediterranean. With dark rum
it invites the surprised ships to anchor.
Waiting for me on deck chairs are
my dear wives and husbands.
We play the man-don’t-get-mad game,
the one who loses sinks his knives.
Just for a moment I shut my eyes and
sibilant consonants unscrew themselves from words,
they rent the five thousand fifth floor of the
Tower of Babel and they lose their harmony.
The sixth wife moves into the Pantheon, taking
with her all the silverware, even the wedding crystal
from Rogaška Slatina for the gods’ domestic staff.
Haiti shakes Guantanamo to the bones.
The Tyrol takes possession of Italy, decrees mandatory
noontime yodelling from every campanile.
Sicily digs a smuggling tunnel to Soho.
The sixth wife returns empty-handed.
Just for a moment I shut my eyes and
the pillow gets down to business with my cranium:
will there be peace, finally?
Jupiter invites the reconnaissance satellites
for an interplanetary conference.
Behind closed doors he threatens the snoopers
with an intergalactic war. They will melt the
Antarctic like ice-creams at the beach,
skyscrapers, light-houses in the middle of the ocean.
The fifth husband makes off with the first wife
to Soho for Sicilian sweet rolls.
A synod of doctors measures my blood pressure,
they tell me I should just relax.
Just for a moment I shut my eyes and
shares fall on stock exchanges.
An alligator in the Florida swamps munches
the foot of a tourist and excretes it
in the shape of a cowboy boot
size thirty-eight.
The neighbours’ splendid cat on the
gable of the roof is kissed by the moon, so that
all my spouses peek from behind the curtain
and emotionally wipe away their tears.
Mr. Atlantic places an oil rig on the palm
of Ms. Adriatic and asks for her hand.
I open my eyes and the sheep I have counted
dash away over the fence, graze on
the salad in my favourite wife’s garden,
who gets angry, I am not to be trusted,
and moves away to the Tower of Babel
with a view of the wrathful languages.
Amsterdam catches the travel fever,
swims away on an excursion to Rotterdam.
En route it looks round the Keukenhof Gardens.
The sheep start on the tulips and daffodils.
The Netherlands make an offer of their
deserted property to Brooklyn. The blue-eyed
husband who owns a yellow taxi
comes back home disappointed.
The hands on the clock stay down in the corner
of half past five. Once again I shut my eyes
and the left eyeball asks the right:
Are you asleep, finally?
We use cookies to analyze our traffic. Please decide if you are willing to accept cookies from our website. You can change this setting anytime in Privacy Settings.