Foreigners


   By Jirina Fuchsova


It was at night
The ancient boat for Shanghai
left very, very long ago
A day-long
waiting for Margaret
jellied towards the evening
like a good wine
and slightly cracked moon
was stickilly dripping
down the walls of Acropolis
The arms of palm trees
were thrusting their elbows against the sky on fire
and at the deserted seashore
we, the children from Piraeus
were lapping up water into our nightcaps of dreaming

The damned race
In souls
the dregs of subterranean rivers
and winged hearts
Who may hold it against us
that the land of larks
of whose womb we were born
to us was bitter?

We drank of her many-colored milks
more fiercely and more deeply than others

Who may hold  it against us
that - one morning
love songs of finches became too familiar
and clover fields too narrow?

Who may hold it against us
that septupotent sun
in buckets of morning 
weighing in and out water over the meadows
weighted also us
into blue distances ?

Who may hold  it against us
that ourselves for ourselves
we have hewn a cross
and that our journey through the fields
to a country fair
turned
into a road to Golgotha ?

We roam
from south to the north
and from north to the south
greeted at the crossroads
by Christ of Seven Wounds
the proto-beatnik of twentieth century

Everything we possess
 evenings
playing a song upon the strings strung upon a
bootjack
Snails' tiny houses on a downward spiral
of waiting non-waiting
and the loneliness of discarded
sandals under the staircase
we equally divide
among our friends the roamers

We pass through foreign cities
ourselves foreigners
and from west to the east we choke on our own
weeping

The weeping
however -
is our own

And the wood for our fire
we always chop only in our own forests..

We were merry and sad
at the same time
Inside the tavern called AT THE GODS'
the soup made of calamari
called to mind a memory
of ineffective waving of coral-like
tentacles and lips drained
of blood
On a plate in front of us
a non-gloss fish eye glowed
with the light of a burned-out star

That afternoon on the seashore
left merely some soft prints in the sand
and the bright-lighted Piraeus
glittered on the neck of Athens like a forbidden love
There was five of us and we were impatient
She - however - did not come
A queenly gift
which she sent  us instead of herself
satiated our hunger and washed us
with bitter wine
Her chauffer
over a tray of pink and white-shivering shrimp
rejoiced that he had finally found the
actual meanings of all things
and his head like an overripe melon
rolled away
all the way into a corner

Three times the Tribunal convened
Three times it decreed Death
Socrates therefore shall not
see the  dawn
Three times the Tribunal convened
Three times it decreed Death

The sun glistening like gold of treachery
sets over Athens

We are foreigners
But in spite of that
our proud tribe
walks through the centuries in a never-ending procession

For eyes of those
who from afar look at our limousines
and of those
who from afar mock the tears of our futile
homesickness
of those who call us traitors
or the damned ones

we are a disturbing element within a landscape

Foolish is our pride
and foolish is our fear
when we pave roads to home with somebody
else's gold

It is not heroism
neither is it treachery
when human being does
what it has to

We are foreigners
The shag carpet of the sky
widespread for mignight love
serves only frostbite on our morning table

Malicious time keeps burrying our hopes
and waits
in no hurry
until we
world-weary
long after the moon that led us through the night
has set
we start to look again for back-going roads

And yet
the root-clinging passion
to leave the roof that once
was so secure
and plunge forward
where no one has walked before
pulses under our skin

Somebody must
always carry forward
the torches of the world
even if the waiting for spring
of the black-bellied plover
should turn to naught 

We 
"foreigners"
we
the keepers of sacred flame
using the dark of our nights for
spinning the Ariadne-thread
are bringing nearer the dawn of that day
when everywhere on the planet
the doors of all houses
shall be
ajar


(1965)