Poetry by Vladimir Kašnar

Nevertheless, you will love me

Stretched on that salty rock,

the white velvet of your soles

and nacre of your toenails, the thighs

resting by alabaster lips, curls of gold

cascading over intumescent curves, all this

fitted to my eye, conveyed by the beholder,

translated into beauty by my own

dictionary, and once done I wrote the grammar.

Madame Artiste, I am the bull you rode

naked last night at the happening,

the whole town stunned.

Unconscious you gave birth

to that gouache, the baby astronaut,

then signed to me,

the doctor from the bull’s constellation,

who permits your canvases

to spring to life.

Line up in my chambers of reflexion,

never feeling the grip of embrace.

Since you died your works live in my eye,

captive energy, beauty in chaos;

nevertheless, you will love me.

4th day in unrecognized countdown

I was running around like a fool,

urgently calling in

to get your potassium fixed,

as if that was the only threat.

My head glowing

in dreams of our diaries

utterly oblivious

of your anger in the morning,

your confused scolding me

for not bringing your shoes,

how you couldn’t go to opera

in a gown and barefoot after all.

I thought how one more time

I have failed you

forgot the reservations,

now sold out for the season.

Perhaps I could have

lent you my shoes and

you would have gotten the tickets,

you always finding a way, as our

daughter would say, comparing us.

Or perhaps I should have found

a way to stop the time,

shrink into that bed

delirious instead of you,

and let you go, let you go,

where did you go?

Some Conversations with My Soul

 

Tell me if I had fallen to pieces,

or this is the way to hang together.

Your bridging the five corners

strung me into your pentagram,

my breathing set in the center

like an abstraction.

When I close my eyes

you look me in the eye,

and we ponder the sweet

and bitter chase you put me through.

You are palpable in this search.

I feel your presence

in vibrating shadows,

aliquots of my life.

In early days of my solitude

my name echoed as a whisper off your lips.

And you are the past

while I still live this future

to the point where you will outlive me,

perched as figurehead on the boat’s bow,

as I cross the river,

my head tucked between your wings.

We talk my gravity into being.

Come and have siesta with me.