The Blue Tower Read Online Free Page A

after all. What Župančič? Izidor
Cankar! Oh, no, I said, Župančič even so.
He kissed ass once or twice, but you resent that
    Â 
just because you kissed some ass yourself. Who cares!
Chi se ne

frega!
That multitudes in hoods and bonnets came out to
sing him serenades, and that as a child I stood before
    Â 
his bier and in my mind’s eye closed his eyes again, drew the
lids down like a pair of shutters, was only fair. He was a
clever one, too. He knew his grandson and I would be
    Â 
al pari
one day and he wanted to protect him. Nice try.
I’m here to detonate your incest, so that now
his, others’ and my gentle snow can fall on you.

MARAIS
I dreamed that Martinique was reheeled with water.
La bouche, la bouche,
André kept repeating, when
Andraž and I lived in Sing Sing. Did I chase him
because his name was so close? I told him
how I’d endured Senghor, that boats came floating from heaven,
falling on Lake Ohrid like fairy flies, that we
danced with our nephews, great-nieces and bodyguards,
all the ones that were here to keep them from staging a coup there. His locals
lured me to a monastery. Okudzhava wore black
shoes. I was the sweet party elite, sweeter than your
mouth. Palms flutter in Senegal. The priests wear cassocks.
And once, as I walked back from the St. Paul metro station, after
Semolič and I had been drinking at George’s, I was picked up
by the same guy who had caught me at the words
la bouche, la bouche.

LINDOS
Thirty police cubes heaped up on an open
head. The syllabus: geoglyphs in Nazco. Set fire
to the wrapper wall of a one-year-old snake that has pimples
(vents) on the inside of its line. Icarus
hid his feathers under some fig trees. They lifted
me up in a basket. Little donkeys are handy.
They sleep on porcelain, covered with quilt.
A coil of heaven, blueprint of the mouth. What do chimneys
support, as they smoke from the belly? Who is
the outer circumference of a baker? In summer cold
clay is enough. And a lapidarium in the next country over, chopped
straight into the water. Mirrors are the defense of
pure little bug legs. The Greek god has a scythe on
his windlass. See how the boat crawls now.

WHITE HASH, BLACK WEED
Gregor tells us what you’re up to.
    Â 
There’s humor tucked away in the chalk of the white spots.
People ask me how I get my eyelids to
sink. It’s simple: skin,
    Â 
stroke a dolphin, sometimes set Armenia on fire.
Diran knows exactly. Hash helps, hash is a
walker. Not for him, he’s black, for him it’s
    Â 
weed. Marco called again. He
really means to buy Lindos. And I think about
Juan (his mother-in-law, the psychiatrist,
    Â 
who trained with Lacan, frustrated because
there are no real customers in Naples), sure he checks out
when he thinks about the Nazco lines. Mostly they’ve
    Â 
left to gather mushrooms, and I’m alone.
I’m riding yesterday’s weed and even Diran’s
typing. He’s in the tower. He’s got everything
    Â 
poured into his computer. But me, if I’m not
physically chopping wood, I get lazy. My cornea is eaten
by torches, and dwarves in togas come rolling out of
    Â 
geoglyphs. It hums, and if anyone has ever really thought how
to build a house, it’s Juan. In Pittsburgh they also want
me for a semester. Liliana Ursu wants me
    Â 
to write her a foreword. “I’m hot in
Kuala Lumpur.” Quite well known in
Singapore. Only to a precious few in
    Â 
Jakarta, but they’re on fire. In Jakarta
people don’t have much money and have to
borrow my books. I still have that sheet,
    Â 
Andrej, that you gave me on the flight to
Asia. All packed away. I’m not making things up
and not lying. Not exaggerating. Except
    Â 
when I admire Marco’s boat.
It’s hopeless. It eats up so much gas.
No wonder you can’t sell it
    Â 
to anyone but a Saudi prince
at a loss, maybe the one who
cruised me on the Greek islands.
    Â 
He designed