About of author

MIROSLAV HOLUB

(September 13th, 1923, Pilsen – July 14th, 1998, Prague)

His father was a lawyer for the railways, his mother a language teacher. In 1942 he was conscripted to work on the railways. After the war he studied medicíně at Charles University in Prague. He did not write poetry at all until he started clinical research at the age of thirty. He worked as a immunologist at the Institute of Clinical and Experimental Medicine in Prague.

Miroslav Holub

We’ll Never Get Parts Like That Again

2013

Miroslav Holub

We’ll Never Get Parts Like That Again

Deluxe Edition of title in the Apps Carpe Diem Online.

No part of this may be reproduced in any form or by any elektronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.

First Publisher by Carpe diem (280th title)

© Miroslav Holub – heirs c/o DILIA, 2013

Translations © Ewald Osers – heirs, 2013

© Carpe diem, 2013

www.carpe.cz

Made in Moravia, Czech Republic, EU

ISBN 978-80-87631-55-3 (pdf)

ISBN 978-80-87631-56-0 (epub)

ISBN 978-80-87631-57-7 (epub-enhanced edition)

Vytvorenie elektronickej verzie Dibuk, s. r. o., 2015

DAY DUTY (1958)

Cinderella

Cinderella is sorting her peas:

bad ones those, good ones these,

yes and no, no and yes.

No cheating. No untruthfulness.

From somewhere the sound of dancing.

Somebody’s horses are prancing.

Somebody’s riding in state.

The slipper’s no longer too small,

toes have been cut off for the ball.

This is the truth. Never doubt.

Cinderella is sorting her peas:

bad ones those, good ones these,

yes and no, no and yes.

No cheating. No untruthfulness.

Coaches drive to the palace door

and everybody bows before

the self-appointed bride.

No blood is flowing. Just red birds

from distant parts are clearly heard

as, plumage ruffled, they alight.

Cinderella is sorting her peas:

bad ones those, good ones these,

yes and no, no and yes.

No little nuts, no prince that charms

and we all long for mother’s arms,

yet there is but one hope:

Cinderella is sorting her peas:

softly as one fits joints together

with fingers gentle as a feather,

or as one kneads the dough for bread.

And though it may be light as air,

merely a song in someone’s head

a gossamer of truth is there.

Cinderella is sorting her peas:

bad ones those, good ones these,

yes and no, no and yes,

no cheating in this bout.

She knows that she is on her own.

No helpful pigeons; she’s alone.

And yet the peas, they will be sorted out.

Graves of prisoners

„Jemand erzählt von seiner Mutter...“

R. M. RILKE

Šumava Mountains; bulls’ horns locked

in fight on trampled soil

piled into hill and rock.

Deserted frontier, deathbed-like,

and abandoned house nearby.

Resisting maples strike

out for the sky.

A cemetery, crumbling, grey,

black lilac choking the stone.

What have those wolfish rains washed away?

And what have they left alone?

Below a ruined wall

four graves still tell a story:

Kolisan Alexandr,

Gavril Kondratenko,

Tatshenko Vladimir,

Henri Joly.

Prisoners. In nineteen forty-two.

And still on the graves no grass will grow,

as if thin smoke hung over them,

as if their bodies rose up from below.

As if they were holding hands.

Under the rain-drenched maples it seems

as if a fire were flickering gently,

as if someone were sitting there

and listening intently.

Someone with an accordion

on this damp, unhealed clay.

Picks it up. Starts to play.

Someone speaks of some campaign or other.

Someone speaks of his mother.

The flypaper

The kitchen’s buzzing conscience:

death of the guilty and innocent,

Sisyphuses.

Behold an earthly paradise

without midge, gnat or fly.

Arbeit macht frei.

Casualty

They bring us crushed fingers,

mend it, doctor.

They bring burnt-out eyes,

hounded owls of hearts,

they bring a hundred white bodies,

a hundred red bodies,

a hundred black bodies,

mend it, doctor,

on the dishes of ambulances they bring

the madness of blood

the scream of flesh,

the silence of charring,

mend it, doctor.

And while we are suturing

inch after inch,

night after nicht,

nerve to nerve,

muscle to muscle,

eyes to sight,

they bring in

even longer daggers,

even more thunderous bombs,

even more glorious victories,

idiots.

ACHILLES AND THE TORTOISE (1960)

Home I.

From amidst last year’s cobwebs

she glanced up from a creaking easy-chair:

‘You’re looking well, boy.’

And wounds were healing,

we were children again,

and no school today.

And when things were at their worst,

with no night and no day

and no up and no down

and we barely dared breathe,

she’d say

from amidst her cobwebs:

‘You’re looking well boy.’

And wounds would heal before her eyes

even though she was

blind.

Voices in the landscape

The mist stays awake.

From infinite distance comes the howling of lemurs.

The grass’s soul laughs happily in the moonlight.

And people think the air is crying.

Darkness gnaws at the trees.

The soul of a legless baker

has a story of yeast to tell.

The strung-up forest

sings in the willow slips.

A seamstress climbs

down the thread from

a tubercular room.

Night oxygenated by eternity.

Soldiers,

tunics still white,

playing the hurdygurdy

of level-crossing gates.

The tavern’s roar in tiny pebbles.

At the break of day

the ghosts will die

and be finally laid to rest

in a thimble

in loaves of bread,

in cubic metres,

in thresholds

and in door-handles

everlasting

like us.

PRIMER (1961)

Alphabet

Ten million years

from the Miocene

to the primary school in Ječná Street.

We know everything

from a to z.

But sometimes the finger stops

in that empty space between a and b,

empty at the prairie at night,

between g and h,

deep as the eyes of the sea,

between m and n,

long as man’s birth,

sometimes it stops

in the galactic cold

after the letter z,

at the beginning and the end,

trembling a little

like some strange bird.

Not from despair.

Just like that.

The sick primer

Even the primer

may

fall sick one day

because

the children are good and work hard.

But that isn’t really quite true,

the leaves drop in the autumn,

but that isn’t really quite true,

flames burn, the moon shines,

but that isn’t really quite true.

Dad may work his fingers to the bone,

but that isn’t really quite true,

this is now and that is later,

but that isn’t really quite true,

even the primer

may

fall sick one day with

what isn’t really quite true,

the worst

contagious disease,

with paper fevers,

with black-and-white hallucinations,

with superstitious spots,

wise men

will bandage the primer,

cover the primer,

lock up the primer

(better a half-truth than nothing),

but the primer

will talk

in its sleep,

don’t believe in ghosts,

don’t believe in plaster,

in eyes or in ears,

don’t believe in words,

the primer

will talk

in its sleep,

better a temporary nothing

than definitive half-truths,

it will call out,

try a bit harder, for Chrissake,

get your noddles working,

don’t swallow your own lies,

wise men

will sentence the insane primer

for illiteracy,

to be set to music,

to be billed as a poster,

to be translated

into a dead language,

and children

themselves

will have to paint a dot,

some will paint the sun,

some will draw a circle

with compasses, for an alpha plus,

and the teacher will say

I shall never get through

testing and marking

that lot.

Midday

Day has cast anchor in the shallows.

Trees tremble with happiness,

immortal

butterflies sing.

The sky is sweet

as a face we love

that day.

Children’s small voices

tumble down the hillsides.

Sun, song, peace:

something’s impending.

Haul of fish

The court is in session.

And all that is hidden

shall be revealed.

In the last fish-pond

the last fish

on the dried-up bed

soundlessly dies.

And the terror of the gills

and the terror of slime

contentedly

rise to the skies.

Spice

A bay leaf from Baghdad,

pepper from Zanzibar,

marjoram from Casablanca.

These are the smell of home.

The cities’s houses exactly

as pictures in the album,

hovels on the desert’s edge,

yellowing,

like those tins on the sideboard.

The bewitching taste of distant lands.

Shooting galleries

All over the place

shooting galleries arrive,

boys are getting ready

to hunt tin clowns.

At night

the rifles grind their teeth,

paper roses smell sweet on the graves

of the peeling fallen.

All over the place

shooting galleries leave,

and in trampled grass

a scarlet

drop of blood

remains.

The geology of man

Some

natural common

cause.

Some

elementary value

of life.

Some goodness

of heart

or liver

or whatever.

These depths are in the sand.

It only takes

a bad storm,

a dash of alcohol,

a drop of grandmother’s

superstition

and the flood is here.

Goodnesss

is orogeny.

Without a magnetic

overburden of necessity

not a hair of sense

is etched.

Only continuous

internal bleeding

coagulating in the fissuers

into basalts and granites.

Man

is just drudgery

for two million years.

GO AND OPEN THE DOOR (1961)

Evening idyll with a protoplasm

Over the houses spreads

the eczema of twilight,

the evening news bulletin

creeps across the façades,

the beefburger is singing.

A protoplasm called

well-that’s-life

bulges from all the windows,

tentacles with sharp-eyed old hags’ heads,

it engulfs a pedestrian,

penetrates into beds across the road,

swallowing tears and fragments of quarrels,

pregnancies and miscarriages,

splashing used cars and television sets,

playing havoc with the price of eggs,

slimily puffing itself with adulteries,

crossing off plotting spores of

things-were-different-in-our-day.

And even after dark it phosphoresces

like a dead sea drying up

between featherbed, plum jam and stratosphere.

A few very clever people

Their words were pins,

their silences needles.

Night with cold hands

was leaning on

the unstitched animal of the world.

And walking home

they kicked

a loaf

from one corner

to the next.

The teacher

The earth rotates,

says the young pupil.

Not so, the earth rotates,

says the teacher.

The hills are turning green,

says the young pupil.

Not so, the hills are turning green,

says the teacher.

Twice two is four,

says the young pupil.

Not so, twice two is four,

the teacher corrects him.

Because the teacher knows best.

The best room, or interpretation of a poem

And now tell it to me

in other words,

says the stuffed owl

to the fly

which, with a buzz,

is trying with its head

to break through the window-pane.

End of preview

Table of Contents

Cover

Title page

Copyright

Cinderella

Graves of prisoners „Jemand erzählt von seiner Mutter...“ R. M. RILKE

The flypaper

Casualty

Home I.

Voices in the landscape

Alphabet

The sick primer

Midday

Haul of fish

Spice

Shooting galleries

The geology of man

Evening idyll with a protoplasm

A few very clever people

The teacher

The best room, or interpretation of a poem

Merry-go-round

Poem technology

The bell

The new house

Love in August

And what’s new

What the heart is like

The end of the world

Death of a sparrow

Clowns

Injection

The gift of speech

Wisdom

Anatomy of a leap into the void

Brief reflection on cats growing in trees

Brief reflection on accuracy

Brief reflection on the theory of relativity

Brief reflection on the word Pain

Brief reflection on an old woman with a barrow

Brief reflection on Johnny

Brief reflection on Charlemagne(see Julius Zeyer’s tale of the same)

Brief reflection on gargoyles

Brief reflection on killing the Christmas carp

Brief reflection on laughter

Brief reflection on the Flood

Brief reflection on test-tubes

Brief reflection on light

The Minotaur’s thoughts on poetry

Brief reflection on maps

Brief reflection on death

Brief reflection on childhood

Brief reflection on fence

Brief reflection on eyes

Brief reflection on the sun

Brief reflection on dwarfs

The dangers of the night

Attempted assassination

Theatre

The Minotaur’s loneliness

Minotaurus Faber

The Minotaur on love

On Sisyphus

On Daedalus

The philosophy of autumn

The old people’s garden

Whaling

Homer

On the origin of football

On the origin of 6pm

At home

Dinner

A philosophy of encounters

Elsewhere

On the origin of the contrary

On the origin of memory

On the origin of full power

Conversation with a poet

The soul

amidst the song of armour

Burning

Sunday

United Flight 1011

Dreams

The last night bus

A lecture on arthropods

Immanuel Kant

Biodrama

Distant howling

Jewish cemetery at Olšany, Kafka’s grave, April, a sunny day

When the bees fell silent

The dead

Half a hedgehog

Interferon

Collision

Landscapes

Memo to a pre-school-age daughter

The man who wants to be himself

A well-read man or A meeting with Russell Edson

A lecture on diseases

Swans in flight

Teeth

The cast

The beginnings of the puppet theatre

Punch, the Princess, Johnny and other childrenwatch the cheerful play of the kittens

Sir Rudolph, the knight

Faustus

Marguerite

In the box

Princesses

The sorcerer’s lament

Punch’s dream

How we played the Gilgamesh epic

The autumnal bus

The Angel of Death

Crucifix

Supper à la Russell Edson

Sand game

Requiem