by Polly Buckingham

Tuesday last week, sitting
on the dock, algae specks lit up
like the cosmos, and this weird wind
comes up — like a dust devil.
A pretty dragonfly,
blue and shiny, gets sucked in
and her wings come off, one at a time,
just like they’d been plucked.
I was home because I’d lost my job.
The bug flails on the surface
like a worm. The surface shakes a little
then goes back to being itself
once she’s drowned.

by Ivan Štrpka
translated from Slovak by James Sutherland–Smith

This is the place in which day – and night
we constantly move, but it never moves with us
not even a hair’s breadth.

All things are under (unknown) snow (as the One)
and (soon) we tread uncertainly (how lightly)
on it.

Without a trace of analogy, the place vanishes. Not even
an interspace of an idea budding. Only a surface
on a surface on which all the names of things are lost.
Their absence overlaps with us.

The border. A patrol. Foreign sounds.
It sounds white in the naked ear of darkness.
And the dark, which doesn’t notice,
will stop us. The cold abides.

by Ivan Štrpka
translated from Slovak by James Sutherland–Smith

In the Midst of Silence
In memory of my grandfather, Štefan Štrpka,
Who fell at the end of the First World War somewhere in
Albania in 1917 leaving two sons.

Cold has boarded up the windows. It lurks in the chinks
light–footed steps presaging a horror.
A stain left by a mirror appears on the walls.

His voice dwindles. The snow
in the early morning squats on the roofs.
A shield, thrown, shading only a half–waking in the overhangs
barely shimmers.
Dusk and snow and earth mixed,
engraved by the fall of a warrior who lies
face down and with a naked
forearm resists all the burden of the snow’s weight.

Silence is under the pall
Only a blind tournament. Only
wandering with the intense fluid of his kin
to penetrations deeper than a day.

His last breath out wholly
exposes his face:

and in sharp touch two naked summer children go under a mask
with flickering reeds being immobilized in the light . . .

A new mask is sketched under the mask.

by Ivan Štrpka
translated from Slovak by James Sutherland–Smith

— do come in,
into the drum (inside) — drops
from empty anti–skies patter their route–marches on to it —
hunker down — yes ideas have been sown — wispy stems have grown
ripened — (in the morning)
the demon scorched them —
a second sun also rose on the bulletproof
glass of your silence —
you aroused into an eruption of the living blind sun
into its downfall —
dot dot dot — don’t send any signals —
(drops) (marching) (to drums) (with a boom boom boom)
(to unheard of catastrophe) —
beasts power the railways —
spillages of precision — connectivity — a tender speed
blows into your face — nowhere do the tracks meet
close your lips — think of the landscape about the need for sleep —
bow to the very centre of the drum — listen
to something whispering from your guts
listen — from your guts the demon speaks — he speaks
he grinds on explosive bread —
the noise increases — from your guts — listen —
you invisibly bulletproof in the crowds
listen — grab your ear and
flush it out hygienically —