Ivan Blatný

This is Czech poet Ivan Blatný (1919-1990). He had a fractured, displaced life, and wrote fractured, displaced poetry, much of it in a kind of macaronic patois reflecting his distance from the Czech language in the English mental asylums that were his home after the war, until his death. Though I'm not sure how much it will have meant to him, it is pleasing to think that he lived to see the liberation of Czechslovakia and even got to send a message of congratulations to Václav Havel when he visited Britain in 1990.

Ugly Duckling Presse are bringing out a selection of his work until the title The Drug of Art.

Here's a poem from it, in Matthew Sweeney's translation:

Small Variation

Thursday 8 pm. On the table:
Matches, cigarettes, tobacco, knife, and lamp.
My tools.
You already know my music from five or six things,
You already know my music from five or six things,
My little song.
As it sizzles on the stove, as it bubbles in quietude
The song of the interlude,
Which happens only once in history.
Matches, cigarettes, tobacco, knife, and lamp.
And dust on all of them.
The inaudible galloping horse carries it on its hoof.
In the deathified flat, dust up to the roof.
In the deathified flat, dust up to the roof.
For the last time the unsettled loses itself in history.
Thursday 8 pm. On the table:
Newspapers, cigarettes, tobacco, knife, and lamp.
Newspapers: Papandreu, Pierlot.
Furniture: Divan, ornamented credenza.
My little song.
Big drops hit the poorly boarded-up window with a splat.
We'll get wet inside the flat!
We'll get wet inside the flat!
And even worse boards
Will be left for the coffin.