Opening Poem An angular picture of suffering is the town, and it is the one great object that stands in your sight. Reader, you open a plain and unpretentious book - and here my song takes flight. Although I look upon the glory of the city, my heart it cannot overpower; its majesty and greatness do not bewitch me; I shall return to the mysterious embrace of star, of wood and brook, of field and flower. But so long as one of my brothers is suffering, I cannot be happy and, bitterly revolting against all injustice, I shall long continue, amid the suffocating smoke, to lean against a factory wall and sing my song. Yet strange to me is the street, I've found. Swiftly it flies like an arrow to conquer the world. They'll never tune in to my blood's rhythm, the running belts and the wheels with which my hands and the hands of thousands are bound, so that, whatever a man's heart feels he must not and cannot embrace his comrade. Yet were I to flee to the wood and the deer, to the flower and the brook, sorrow would so weigh my heart down that, without turning to look at all the beauty and quiet and passion, I should go back to the town, the city that welcomes one in its ice-cold fashion, where the nightingale ceases to sing and the pine-wood loses its smell, where not only man is enslaved, but the flower, the bird, the horse and the humble dog as well. Gentle reader, as you read these lines, reflect for a moment and note this down; the angular picture you scan is the town. Why, man feels just like a flower: Don't pluck him, don't break him, don't tread on him! Sinful City The city of factory owners, boxers, millionaires, the city of inventors and of engineers, the city of generals, merchants, and patriotic poets with its black sins has exceeded the bounds of God's wrath: and God was enraged. A hundred times He'd threatened vengeance on the town, a rain of sulphur, fire, thunderbolts raining down, and a hundred times he'd taken pity. For he always remembered what once he had promised: that even for two just men he'd not destroy his city, and a god's promise should retain its power: just then two lovers walked across the park, breathing the scent of hawthorn shrubs in flower. A Song About Girls Through the city flows a mighty river, seven bridges bestride it; along the embankment walk a thousand pretty girls and no two are alike. From heart to heart you go to warm your hands in love's great warming flame; along the embankment walk a thousand pretty girls and they're all the same. Red-Hot Fruit To love poets the vanishing fauna of Yellowstone Park And yet we love poetry poetry the eternal waterfall Long-range guns were shelling Paris Poets in steel helmets But why count those who died of unhappy love? Goodbye Paris! We sailed round Africa and fish with diamond eyes died in the steamer's props what hurts most is one's memory Negro lyres and the smell of hot air the red-hot fruit of chandeliers only ripens towards midnight and Monsieur Blaise Cendrars lost a hand in the war Sacred birds on slender legs like shadows rock the fate of worlds Carthage is dead And the wind plays in the sugar cane a thousand clarinets Meanwhile on brittle parallels of the globe History century-old ivy is twining I'm dying of thirst Mademoiselle Muguet and you won't tell me how the wine must have tasted in Carthage A star was struck by lightning and it's raining The water's surfaces swirl like taut drum skins Revolution in Russia the fall of the Bastille and the poet Mayakovsky is dead But poetry a honeyed moon dripping sweet juices into flowers' calixes Honeymoon If it were not for all those foolish kisses we'd not be taking honeymoon trips to the sea - but if it weren't for honeymoon trips, what use then all those wagon-lits ? Perpetual fear of railway station bells, ah, wagon-lits , honeymoon sleeping cars, all wedded happiness is brittle glass, a honeyed moon stands in a sky of stars. My love, look at the Alpine peaks outside, we'll let the window down, we'll smell the amaranth, the sugary white of snowdrops, lilies' snow - behind the wagon-lit 's the wagon-restaurant . Ah, wagons-restaurants , ah, cars for newlyweds, to stay in them forever and to sup with knife and fork on happiness in bed. HANDLE WITH CARE! GLASS-FRAGILE! THIS SIDE UP! And one more day and then another night, two marvellous nights, two marvellous days like these. Where is my rail guide, that poetic book, oh and the beauty of my wagons-lits! Oh wagons-restaurants and wagons-lits! Oh honeymoons] Philosophy Remember the wise philosophers: Life is but a moment. And yet whenever we waited for our girlfriends it was an eternity. The Fan To hide a girl's blushes, provocative eyes, deep sighs, finally wrinkles and a smile become wry. A butterfly alighting on her breasts, palette of loves gone by with the colours of faded memories. Moscow The minuet has long ceased to be danced, the harp has long lost its last audience. The display cases in the old palace are tombstones of the dead. There were battlefields here, the Kremlin's bloodstained wall still bares its teeth. Bear witness for us, you who are dead, buried in silks. Cups without wine, flags dipped to the past, a sword that recalls from whose hand it dropped. Rotten rings, a mildewy diadem, a corsage that's fragrant still, the disintegrating robes of dead tsarinas and eyeless masks, the look of death and damnation. The orb, symbol of power, lying on the ground, an apple worm-eaten and rotten. All's over, all is over under the golden domes, death is guarding history's graveyard. Suits of armour, empty like golden nutshells on carpets of unparalleled design, and Empire carriages drive back into the past without horses, without lights, without occupants. Apple Tree with Cobweb Strings Deep-red apples curve down the royal trunk like a harp, fitted by autumn with cobweb strings, ring and sing, my player! We are not from a land where oranges grow, where round Ionian columns climb the vine that's sweeter than the lips of Roman women; ours but the apple tree, fiercely bowed down by age and fruit. Beneath it sits a man who's seen all this - Parisian nights, Italian noon, above the Kremlin a cold moon - and has come home to reminisce. A tune that sings a calm and quiet song that could be played upon these cobweb strings sounds in my ear. And where is beauty found, mountains, cities, seas? Where do trains take you in search of peace, to heal still smarting wounds? Where? And women's eyes, their breasts, whose rise and fall would rock your head in rich erotic dream, do they not tempt you? A voice that's redolent of distance calls you: Your land is small! Do you stay mute when that seductive voice speaks to the vagrant in you? Midday is gone, I pick an apple from the ancient tree, inhale its fragrance. To be alone and far from women's laughter and from women's tears, to be at home, alone, with the familiar tree-song in your ears. Why, the pointless beauty of some foolish women isn't worth an apple. Panorama The stag is retreating, the smoke of its antlers is rising through the fern's foliage, listen to the star, but softly, only softly. Plates full of fruit, nights full of stars, I'd like to hand you this bronze bowl and be a barber. Oh coiffeurs, tired hands gliding down smooth hair, a comb is dropped, the sculptor lays down his chisel and in the mirror eyes have turned to ice. It's night already. Are you asleep? Shatter the softness of your eiderdowns! The midnight hour. Electric lamps. Dark, light, dark, half-light and behold: The comb of mountains combs the hair of the sky and stars are falling fast like golden lice. Dance of the Girls' Chemises A dozen girls' chemises drying on a line, floral lace at the breast like rose windows in a Gothic cathedral. Lord, shield Thou me from all evil. A dozen girls' chemises, that's love, innocent girls' games on a sunlit lawn, the thirteenth, a man's shirt, that's marriage, ending in adultery and a pistol shot. The wind that's streaming through the chemises, that's love, our earth embraced by its sweet breezes: a dozen airy bodies. Those dozen girls made of light air are dancing on the green lawn, gently the wind is modelling their bodies, breasts, hips, a dimple on the belly there - open fast, oh my eyes. Not wishing to disturb their dance I softly slipped under the chemises' knees, and when any of them fell I greedily inhaled it through my teeth and bit its breast. Love, which we inhale and feed on, disenchanted, love that our dreams are keyed on, love, that dogs our rise and fall: nothing yet the sum of all. In our all-electric age nightclubs not christenings are the rage and love is pumped into our tyres. My sinful Magdalen, don't cry: Romantic love has spent its fires. Faith, motorbikes, and hope. Song We wave a handkerchief on parting, every day something is ending, something beautiful's ending. The carrier pigeon beats the air, returning; with hope or without hope we're always returning. Go dry your tears and smile with eyes still smarting, every day something is starting, something beautiful's starting. Prague Above the elephantine blankets of flower-beds a Gothic cactus blooms with royal skulls and in the cavities of melancholy organs in the clusters of tin pipes, old melodies are rotting. Cannonballs like seeds of wars were scattered by the wind. Night towers over all and through the box-trees of evergreen cupolas the foolish emperor tiptoes away into the magic gardens of his alembics and through the halcyon air of rose-red evenings rings out the tinkle of the glass foliage as it is touched by the alchemists' fingers as if by wind. The telescopes have gone blind from the horror of the universe and the fantastic eyes of spacemen have been sucked out by death. And while the moon was laying eggs in the clouds, new stars were hatching feverishly like birds migrating from blacker regions, singing the songs of human fate - but there is no one who can understand them. Listen to the fanfares of silence, on carpets threadbare like ancient shrouds we are moving towards an invisible future and His Majesty dust settles lightly on the abandoned throne. Wet Picture Those beautiful days when the city resembles a die, a fan, a bird song or a scallop shell on the seashore - goodbye, goodbye, pretty gifts, we met today and will not ever meet again. Those beautiful Sundays when the city resembles a football, a card, an ocarina or a swinging bell - in the sunny street the shadows of passersby were kissing and people walked away, total strangers. Those beautiful evenings when the city resembles a clock, a kiss, a star or a sunflower that turns - at the first chord the dancers flapped their wings of girls' hands like moths or nightmares at the first light of dawn. Those beautiful nights when the city resembles a rose, a chessboard, a violin or a crying girl - we played dominoes, black-dotted dominoes with the thin girls in the bar, watching their knees, which were emaciated like two skulls with the silk crowns of their garters in the desperate kingdom of love. November 1918 In memoriam Guillaume Apollinaire It was autumn. Foreign troops had occupied the vineyard slopes, emplaced their guns among the vines, like nests, and aimed them at the Gioconda's breasts. We saw a sad impoverished land, soldiers without legs or hands but not without a spark of hope, the fortress gates were swinging open. A scent-filled autumn sky: below it a city with an ailing poet, a window to the evening sun. Here is a helmet, sword and gun. This city, true, is not where I was born, its rivers flow along without concern, but once below a bridge there I had wept: a pipe, a pen, a ring are all I kept. The gargoyles up by the cathedral's rafters vomit the city's dirt into the gutters, their heads bent forward from the cornice toppings and fouled and spattered by the pigeons' droppings. The bells ring out, the bronze notes fall, but this time without hope at all, a funeral cortège must pass down the boulevards of Montparnasse.

Excerpted from the poetry of jaroslav seifert Copyright © 1998 by Ewald Osers and George Gibian
Excerpted by permission. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.