Colorado Review

113 tomaž šalamun Translated from the Slovenian by Michael Thomas Taren and the author Anatomy Lesson Memory tugs the arm. It tears it out and heals it, stuffs it like a black pudding. Were you carried around in a sedan chair? If you compare the skin of a slave with the sole of the foot of those today, it’s not strange that you’re amazed. Where do you live? How many square meters do you have, do you have central heating? Do your bills pile up? Do you have canals on your shoulders? Can I view how the hilt scrubbed all this? If the anointed Alexandria man would but listen to Balzac, such a peripeteia could happen for real. You can’t be sorry for fish not being a stone of fruit. You can’t shout and tug the history because there was no muslin then. If you wished it in Paleolithic you were numbed. Your yearning surged with Atlantic waves and smashed rocks before muslin existed. At that time you were still giving muslin away, you forgot everything, except color. You soaked your skin in it, you changed it with tissue and drank, drank long gulps of dark tea to shorten time if muslin gets lost again. You helped in the dissecting room. You helped Dr. Tulp to keep his eyes on the chopping block. CRSP09 poetry.indd 113 1/30/2009 12:51:02 PM 114 tomaž šalamun it exists Translated from the Slovenian by Michael Thomas Taren and the author The broadshouldered mummy drinks camomile and runs away from the castle. Arms are steep and full of holes. The blossom is tied to chemicals. Otter’s eyes are technical. Nutria, with mustaches, in skirts, climbs the steps. Throw it away, Danilo Kiš said to me when I smoked walking the steep steps in Vilenica. Do you make sculptures from flesh? Did Artaud in vain keep destroying Valéry? How to preserve and moisten? The empire smooths the surface. Wounds must boil. The whole world should sew buttons, as a Portuguese woman, with one thread. The button’s silhouette and the atom bomb’s mushroom, do they still play the game of dwarves in the trunk of a tree? When you run in the tunnel clean and come out black as smoke? Birds in a fuel oil. It’s yet impossible to do a lot, to recite Racine on earth’s crust. And say again: savoir, vouloir, pouvoir, when the white boiling sun in the height of six crosses waits for the seventh. CRSP09 poetry.indd 114 1/30/2009 12:51:02 PM ...