Lavaca grazes poems in languages she doesn’t know, from pastures across the globe. Lavaca ruminates. Ocassionally, when inspiration strikes, she moos back a response. Her English is not too good, for she is a cow; and still, sometimes she even dares moo in Spanish.
Chameleon-like
I’m flattered that you, woman,
flew your way here in freedom,
spontaneous, with no orders;
now dark, now white,
chameleon-like,
sick now, now blue,
now blue, no more;
but so’s our female
nature, and so are us!
In swirl and change, don’t rush!
Stare instead and suck the moment in.
Do as you will! Do as you will!
And don’t betray your skin
if sometimes blue comes back –
just let it pass, my friend, and go ahead!
Lavaca mooed back at “Die Freuden“ (1827)
by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.
Mumtain
I wasn’t born
out of nothing, of everything
in general.
My specific conception was warm,
and soft, and painful.
At the mountain where
mum was slaughtered
unceremoniously,
I stop for a second
staring at trains, holding a tear.
Lavaca mooed back at 2 poems
from the “Manyoushuu” anthology (ca. 759):
number 352 by Sami Mansei and number 208, anonymous.
Darkness unchained
I entered a lonely R.E.M.
by a river of sunset
when darkness unchained
rose before my eyes
like an army of ants
covering the earth with oily razors,
blinding mothers who searched for their child
but saw nothing but the moon.
The dream unraveled mid-air
like the instant drawing of a thousand arrows
and I woke up at once a thousand mornings
with a thousand bad dreams laid out to dry
by a river of sunset.
Lavaca mooed back at “Milito“ by Penka Batoewa.
Relativity according to Escher
The circle is the shape that can’t escape
the trap of its own history and follows its fate
in blind determination. Ruins are
the repetition of a kiss from time.
Twelve months loop ’round forever,
like night rides the back of day
with reins to its own mouth.
Embers grow cold as the room warms up.
The backdoors are blown open with a bang,
the void is left behind.
Man looks around and wonders
what it means, or where it all began
as if it mattered, whereas the theory goes
we’ll reach the starting point simply by waiting.
Lavaca mooed back at “De relativiteit van Escher “ (2007)
by Michel Krott.
Migrate
I’ll find a new land, look up, head North,
away from the rich warm Southern borders
where men carefully listen to echoes from afore
or actually do bear the saddlebags of others;
or scourge their sinful heads and enjoy their acts,
or pile up hate for brothers counting fact after fact:
the inherited land, the inherited land
I’m leaving it behind, I’m leaving it behind!
Or did I get that land trapped beneath my hooves,
to carry around, around wherever I might move?
Lavaca mooed back at “Dalkarlasång“ (1859) by Otto Lindblad.
Liederabend (Evening song)
Black. Three-legged.
Strong. Tense with a thousand nerves,
headless, your head is
a human on a stool,
your teeth are shaking and falling
apart, old thing, and yet
your mouth opens
in a tongueless yawn and sings
of greener days and golden suns.
Tonight, the sky is not the colour
of the sea, not the colour of your
bright low eyes, tonight the sky
is velvet blue, a curtain
to drape around your coffin,
old bull, to wear around your neck
when you venture out under the snow
to see your resting place,
to check it’s fit
and plant a seed nearby
so you’ll have something to look at
while awaiting resurrection.
Will you come back, my dear,
as a red flower? Will you
come back at all?
Should I follow the seed to the tree
to the saw to the truck to the world,
and search every shop window
to find your smell under the paint
of the finest Bösendorfer?
I might die myself,
dear bull, you know,
before I ever found you.
Age is catching up with me,
with all of us, not only with the old.
I can’t distinguish youthfulness
from Tuesdays anymore.
Mute as I’ve become, hairless,
almost skinless -can’t tell my flesh from meat-,
I stick to this image from twenty years ago
when you and I had everything to learn
and would do so.
The two of us alone under the spotlight,
dazzling a whole flock of spectators
-only two ties onstage:
to life, and to each other,
and age, my love,
is catching up with both.
Lavaca mooed back at a whole recital for piano and bariton
at Oper Frankfurt on December 2nd, 2008.
The program included works by Robert Schumann,
Hugo Wolf and Franz Schubert.
Deepblack
Masses are asking
how deep inside
I feel the knife before I break
Before the nerve gets cut
in half. And I become the darkness.
You eat, your greasy soul
is ever impossible to wash.
Lavaca mooed back at “Diponegoro“ (1943) by Chairil Anwar.
