Trenčín

from New Chapters, Eastern Europe 1990 by John Bennett and John Laidler

	/

Streaming + Download

Includes high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more. Paying supporters also get unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app.

Purchasable with gift card

name your price
Buy the Full Digital Album

lyrics

Dark deep-set eyes are moored beneath a worn felt hat,
generous blue veins drain dainty polar hands
proffering the catalogue. Her skin is crumpled paper,

hurriedly retrieved and smoothed. ‘Nicht crowns’.
She opens a well-thumbed address book at the letter S.
The notes are all in German.

Her other hand rises stone by stone, trembling with the effort,
points to the stained glass and massive central light fitting
ringed by globes, ‘original’ (with a hard g)

and the dome stenciled with script, ‘original’.
About to ask a question, I see the last page inked
one - nine - three - nine,

realisation steps on me, sadness oozes
out from the ground of my body - how stupid.
I’m knocking on the back door of history.

Light flows down white-washed walls opening the space
as a gallery, a series of paintings deconstruct landscapes
with trees cut down and drawn out into boxes

holding the pencils and brushes of their execution.
Black and white photographs preserve light, it delicately perspires
shadows staining the corners of attics and growth of orchards.

The red flag's faded, the almanac stripped of possibilities.
What can be felt and smelt are limb-thin, wooden totems
and potted palms placed between women on a marble floor.

Discarded rubble of the past is bricolage put to use.
Originality is impossible to prevent. As I scrawl notes
she glances over wondering what I'm doing.

I leave her saying the only phrase I could share,
děkuji vám (with a soft d), using my tongue
then throat and finally my lips to thank her for everything.