they don’t rise or fall. they’re framed / on the walls. driftless syllables ornamental / and motionless.

But while we glorified our dead poets, the living ones mostly got on our nerves, with all their boozing and grumbling. So when the country of Slovenia was born, we were finally able to openly despise our poets, poetry, and art in general, that entire freak show of inebriated lunatics who think they’re superior to everyone else.

At the start of the war, two pilots and one poet were seeking Galina’s hand. Such were those times: pilots surpassed poets in both number and capability.

Rain falls on the wedding / a hole in the church is suspected / and the blessing jumps crazily / from umbrella to umbrella

He sang / like a gas station on a black summer night.

I greet your gliding flight O wings of death / But there are other signs too

When the dogs had finished their business, they were, for quite some time afterward, unable to disentangle, and the Abbot asked us not to disturb them. After he had anointed them with holy water, they slid apart and scurried out of the temple. I followed them out into the street.

In the evenings Karcsi sat quietly at the table and watched his mother pray. Her lips moved silently through the rosary, and he looked as if he were trying to figure out which part of the prayer she was saying.

Life is so afflicted by clarity and definition these days that the sensations of mystery and beauty I associated with the mist are even more precious to me.