The Kiss Across the Ocean - Tomaž Šalamun

O little bird, how tired I am!
Do you want to see everything that I have written today?
New I have an entire factory
and little men dressed in little sackcloths.
I hung them by my thread
and glued them to the wall of the abbys.
They don’t have any ground beneath them,
and they tug at me constantly.
Strange, with what kind of rusty shovels
do they want to be good.
But I don’t let them. Njet.
First to clean the shovels.
I take care of everything. For the kitten also.
And l curse the too long arc
between the letter and the letter.
I lmow, now at least five of them
fly in the air, or they loll in
the Correo Central.
Why can’t you kiss as I can do,
look, the aspired K
and already your body melts
like little crumbs in butter
and you fall asleep nicely.

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Tomaž Šalamun (1941 - 2014) Slovenia
Translated by Joshua Beckman