Author: Tom Schulz
Translator: Donna Stonecipher
Waste, the Day
Whatever you do, do it
to cheerful forgetfulness:
it all blossoms with no memory at all
(behold the wild thyme
in the lumbar regions of a pre-Provençal night)
There is no haven in the haven
only the dew and the dewlaps
there is no longer no longer
There is no longer
the “sell by” sticker on a swordfish
in a seaman’s supply store
how deep is the ocean
(at an unclear spot
where the text has a screw loose
and the poet shit for brain-
sausage)
I cheat loss just as I cheated with
losses in the roadstead, where the rocking
made me nicker like a rapt taxi-nag
What you don’t let go of, let it go
into cheerful raptures
The forgetfulness of a street corner
which I was
like you in front of the ice cream parlor:
a jumbo shrimp with mint chocolate chip
The gnostic worm, the glow
-ing filaments of a streetlamp colony
Count me among the berries
Count me among the quinces
Make me flitter
against the flapping blackbird habit
Ben Nevis, Glasgow
You pointed at the whisky wall
with two fingers, Missy MacCallan
I was a squall from Islay
I came over from Lewis as a field of rain
In the glasses stood the holy
ghost, it lit up twice
my evil twin
caused Highland Park to quake
(but I’m an untraditional boy with no pipe)
Leave the salt-drunk sea its bliss
till the Bruichladdich lays the bar low
Pull the Bratentweed out of the Kelvingrove
and dance with me in Westend’s foolish bars
And the Kunst won’t talk to you
Doff your hat for the drinkers from the pier
my dear! They made a memorial
of our bench in the gardens of rampant
hemlock
Ivy, posthumously don’t kilt me
We are two
minus two
martinis
Belle de Jour
She came on a day when the violets
pounced, the windows cast off
their crosses, God was once again
a moving violation
Toward heaven meant:
a black Friday, all the way down
to your underpants, the collapse
of all banks, people were burgling
their own homes, they vanquished
the threshold, it went from me to euphony
150 million or more
With the tip of the tongue
money was obliterated!
She came on a day when the roses
flew over the pond, when the legislature
went out the window, in bad
German she straightened out two stock marketeers
She went to town
the cypresses were cracking
And this was written to the dream:
God was once again
a supersonic machine
The first poem appears in Nick Grindell’s translation in no man’s land # 1
Originals © Tom Schulz
Translations © Donna Stonecipher