and there is this spider and
still there are children’s books and thieves
at merry-go-rounds and paper dogs
buoyant in the autumn sky
still sniffing up to each other in the same old way and vampires
and rivers and soldiers
and wombs keep functioning in exactly the same way
as last year and legendary heroes have a get together
in various clubs
and climb the factory chimneys
cathedrals glitter prettily in the sun and young women
study foreign languages
and I keep losing them in the world and at the world’s end
there is a strange light as in a stove
and if you are naughty
your family will lock you up in the closet where there is a spider
where there are moths as big
as crocodiles if you are naughty
you’ll have your family breathing down your back your motherland
breathing down your back violence
breeds violence and that’s as certain
as anything else can possibly be
the genre-painting something like
statue of woman and astronaut and something like a small picture
of a spider really nothing
lots to drink and addled fear
and pure
insanity the gentle poison
of eternal love it was all in vain
to die tenfold it’s still
the same and of course
it doesn’t have any sense to it
but now it’s all the same
in time you realised you were stuck
but you don’t want to leave
neither did I want to get out
with all those unforgettably
sweet dreams from the journey
into life
so this would be a red
genre-painting
a message from the globe of the glowing city
ghostly lyric and my inner voice
tells me it isn’t good enough
but I don’t care for now it is morning
and your cough
sounds like shots it’s well known
that the devil has a map of the world
and that you know
there is no way out
because you have it also
--
Jáchym Topol
(Translated by Eva Klimentová and Toby Litt)