• Maria Kalinova in translation: Under Supper’s Knife

Maria Kalinova in translation: Under Supper’s Knife

 “Under Supper’s Knife”

THE MASTER

I don’t dare sit in the master’s workshop,

I don’t pretend to be his equal – forget all those needles, girl,

forget the handcuffs, the razors, here’s some silverware

eat and drink with a pure heart, don’t go looking for punishment

somewhere they sell laundry detergent,

somewhere people get over it,

they only dip their boots in carefully,

suitcase by suitcase, cart by cart

bite by bite, swallow backwards,

a thousand years ago, sometime then, my word hadn’t yet

split in two

I am iron and I am the master,

And I am the girl, the master’s girl,

Between welcome and farewell we fall silent

more and more slowly.

BREAD AND PUNISHMENT

To the contrary, I don’t see a difference

between paper and scissors – their histories conceal a weakness

the one does not remain whole, while the other splits in two, my sister,

the face to the left reflects the face above, the face to the right,

as you well know, is, in fact, the one below,

to look for a difference is pure poison,

that neither feeds nor heals us,

you must be as strict as possible from now on,

come up with a way to punish yourself when indifference

no longer brings you satisfaction, but dread and what’s more -

if some sister asks you about some other one: do you know her,

say no

I don’t think I know her.

THE BLIND ONE HERSELF

We won’t see anything,

even though the zipper over Our eyes is open –

two dead coins, minted in law

and truth weigh more or less

after every swing,

whoever’s got brains enough, let him count

the slaps,

you strike Us on one cheek,

we put the other into circulation,

we try to not let it hurt Us,

Us, the Blind One, I repeat

It doesn’t hurt Us.

THE DROUGHT

She gave her clothes for mending.

Don’t anybody rush to make excuses for her,

We can put it this way, too:

Let she who went tearing off to dally

remain a rent cassock. Toss her the rags,

the Raggedy Anns and the ragamuffins, fling them on her like dust,

chase her from away here, she will never pass through the eye of a needle,

never never, because this is also true –

her fur is precious to her, she trembles over her skin night and day,

a camel like me would most likely get away with it,

let them stuff pillows with her hair and her down,

a cracked jug – her young girl’s body,

her face – the sound of the wind.

BABYLON

I want to be the only person

on this toy,

spaces for jealousy open up,

when I lose it, the saltshakers grow

and there’s salt instead of the usual

Saturday things, thirst and thirst,

thirst and desolation,

let them tell me that I’m back

in Babylon, that I’m paying for it again:

numerals in exchange for happiness,

I receive the familiar key,

wind up the spring, and it sings...

SPHERICAL MURDERS

...if a man has to die

let him be killed in a hotel room,

because in hotel rooms everything is fleeting –

the bedside lamp easily wanes,

in the bathroom, you’re squeezed by spherical murders, white and wet,

instead of water: once we imagine it, it will be given to us,

a one-room death traces a map

of dying

wishes and so… I wish for a man for drowning,

and you – for аll sorts of fleeting things,

we lie next to each other and slowly undress

the murder…

THE NEOLITHIC DWELLINGS

Interwoven sticks plastered with clay

the priest’s hands, not that there isn’t stone,

like there isn’t brick, but stone

makes for tricky masonry and so: the clay beds,

in them the clay inhabitants and on top someone

builds other clay inhabitants

and so on until your house dies:

fire after fire extinguishes the hearth

and the goddess of dead dwellings comes,

opens the gabled roof, takes out the soul –

a ball of clay and carries it

far across the river, here, to the museums...

OEDIPUS COMPLEX

For A. Ilkov

 Come, good people, the war in the garden

is waged from autumn to autumn, something nibbles at the green

outstretched arms of the trees and the sons wither;

there is absolutely nothing to do when

your health is gone, withered cases

drift into your mind, all those years we went

to various teachers – it was always nominative, genitive,

a translation from the Slavic, finally… you slice open the book,

but there’s no salvation inside or as they say in these parts:

you’ve reached the bottom of the book, the hole in time,

when fathers fall ill, become children and so on

until the very last Slavejkov – it’s difficult to speak

through something continually shriveling, in sickness talents

are enfeebled, buried in bed, come, good people,

into the closed-up room, where this evening poetry is on her own,

infectious, her ears adorned with precious gems,

and now even if I were to tell my child: read, he is looking

through the window, as if to say that he absolutely

positively doesn’t want to, come, good people, this child

doesn’t even want to read his own father...

SUMMER

But the thief is afraid of the dogs,

how will she get in without them noticing her,

without them giving her away to the owners,

without those folks

flying straight off the handle –

she turns the handle by twisting

her body

towards the missing R’s;

it’s as if the door does not separate

one’s own from another’s,

it creaks quietly, so quietly:

inside you must walk on tiptoes!

And no one sees her, no one drowns her

and tears her to pieces –

no one!

They didn’t bite her,

or bark in syllables,

rather she is punished learnedly

for her break in  –

sentenced to invisibility in this house...

AUTUMN

What did the needles write?

Did they sow threads into her skin,

to make gowns sprout up,

to make her ashamed

of the silky entering

inside, inside, inside…

The sewing machine gave a dress –

Don’t worry, there’ll be bloody redress

the emperor has gone naked, too, but in fact

it wasn’t the emperor,

but his clothes that were invisible,

so her lot is worse:

in one sense she hadn’t wanted

to give birth, while now in another:

she never will!

INSIDE: The Daughter’s Reply

Most likely I’ll unstick like a shoe,

tossed amidst dead jellyfish. But they say

that this, too, has happened: a child has

grown back in, like a tumor ...

M. Nikolchina, “Asymbolica,” p. 31

I remembered, yes, I remembered,

there isn’t much time,

it won’t be on the way, or in this direction,

no woman ever gets away with anything at all,

thus I, who am poor of oysters, snails and eggs,

should not look for someone else, I should not beg someone

for shells, someone to break me open

and scoop me out soft and weak,

soft and weak outside,

it’s not enough protection, mother,

I repeat “It’s not enough protection!”

as unborn I grow back into you,

until I become, precisely –

I become the real no-woman-at-all,

who has nothing to give back to anyone

nothing ever comes back to anyone

and so,

don’t worry

anymore:

I’ve tied up the dogs!

Translated by Angela Rodel

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