"Sierra Nevada," a poem by Tomaž Šalamun

SIERRA NEVADA

All history is in my body hair, every bloody red atlas.

My body hair sets the cosmos to delight.

If a flower blooms, it blooms only because I give it access to my body hair.

It’s of granite, purer then heaven’s tears dropping on Hermes’s chest.

And when little dogs have kids and give birth to them: because of my body hair.

Because of my body hair Rome collapsed, it was entangled.

On the sun, view of the Sierra, ants, and trees and anthems, alloyed in zigzag.

Honey scratches my throat: my body hair.

Little horses change into bundles.

Ha! Who drew the back of the stone and displayed the mountains precisely as they stand, drew walls onto them and poured air over everything.

The world is a cake.

The heart, glaziness and almonds in it.

A body hair is more splendid than alcohol.

Jets graze together with sheep and goatlings, elastic is the bridge from where the kings were thrown.

I rock.

My body hair is torrents.

Sometimes I bind the trunks with a thin wire and attach them to the cart.

A little train puffing heavily like a pilgrim.

Get it done! I whisper blessed, history gets more and more fragrant blooms.

I attract women because they have less body hair.

They’re cold, wind blows on their head without a man and kids are hunting for their father, their real ⁄ 26

father, the one who puts his body hair in their mouths, so that they can swallow thin, polished hits of pool balls, manna that bleaches their eyelashes.

I’m the body hair.

I’m the body hair’s father.

I’m the chicken’s little thighs on my sheets, on which the wildness breathes, inviting me with it’s every breath into bloom.

⁄ 27