I have my directions
Written in some uncertain kind of code
I know the groves and orchards
But not the people I see on the road
I have changed my money
For the paper they use here to pay
At stores where they speak another language
Where street lamp shadows slip on the doorways
And I don’t feel like dancing
Maybe you can hold my hand tonight
No I don’t feel like dancing
All I ask is that you hold me tight
‘Cause I don’t feel like dancing
No I don’t feel like dancing any more
It is snow. It’s snowing.
Footprints running like a line of news
Or history written on lined paper:
Only insults, nothing but a bruise.
The fields here don’t quite fit
Like a map I don’t know how to fold
It’s one story. It still matters
For as long as that story’s told.
And I don’t feel like dancing
Maybe you can hold my hand tonight
No I don’t feel like dancing
All I ask is that you hold me tight
‘Cause I don’t feel like dancing
No I don’t feel like dancing any more
Even with my eyes closed
I know this place that might have been my home
The woods where trees are still scarred
With my name that’s carved in like a poem.
I barely fill my coat up
The sleeves are empty as the twilight sky
Heading to the empty
House where I last saw my father cry
And I don’t feel like dancing, &c.
2 comments:
I like your poem. It made me curious about Simko, so I looked him up. Interesting bio, and nice poetry. I'll ask Laco if he know him or his work.
Thanks
If the bio you read did not make clear, his family left what was then Czechoslavkia in 1968 after the Russian tanks rolled in, and he graduated from Wyomng High School in 1977. He died a few years ago, at the age of 45; it's not clear to me to what degree this was caused by his years of drinking. Not much of his own writing was published during his lifetime, although his translation of Georg Trakl is pretty easy to find and worth reading. "The Arrival" was published last year, edited in part by Jimmy "Eichmann" Reidel. I would be very curious to learn if his modest fame spread back to his home town such that Laco had heard of him.
Post a Comment