5 Antilyrik & Other Poems Vítězslav Nezval Translated by Jerome Rothenberg & Miloš Sovák The Lesser Rose Garden [Prologue] The sun reflected in the colored splashes of the paper lanterns in the lesser rose garden. The bowman lurking back of the ecliptic with [imaginary arrows pierced the apricots. He drove a needle thru her hat that lady sleeping on her swing the lilies of the valley underneath her [slowly burning out. The dandelions’ breath. A mussel opened up toward sunset in the sand drifts saga’s dream. & a stork drifts on a boat in mid-stream: this Italian poet from the days of Petrarch. Here on dusty roads enclosed by ivy I can feel the sun’s vibrations fill me & remembrance of lost love is like the lesser rose garden & the time spent in tbe arbor where we read romantic verses of eternity; & mystery. & iťs like a memory of bygone Sundays from your childhood & your eyes fixed sharply on the highway crossing opened wide like flowers in September those blue moon like blossoms which will stay with me till death reminding me of sunsets of my home of sagas where I know nothing but the name. Premier Plan [Stage Front] This night was ablaze like a necklace. Above the green Bohemian lakes, the calls of frogs in [chorus, a bell was sounding an alarm. Like the meridian a rubber ring of sound expanded over the rotting woods, over the loony idyll of the goblins those who chased [each other thru the stacks of wheat, over the searchlights from the cities beams inscribing pithy poems onto the clouds. The rings that were projected there, the foaming champagne bottles, a roulette wheel like Saturn circled Monte Carlo, while Versailles spouted golden fountains & the Hotel Ritz in clouds broadcast a final tango to which corsairs on Corsica would dance in time for the new vintage. Vesuvius smoldering over Italy which rested on its laurels & in Leningrad the streets were empty opening like canals into the world beyond. Under the deepest basements land mines crisscrossed like white-hot cigars lighting up caves & tunnels in which gangsters crouched with guns & flashlights. Asia steeped in perfumes waggled like a yellow flag embossed with fancy baubles lotus gardens cities that shed light like gold-rimmed china tea sets. Tokyo convulsing in the air was like a neon sign set up by fakirs sleeping at the base of giant Hindustani mountain ranges. Antarctic ice was like the ruins of a marble kingdom polar bears would dart across & snow-white fishes [without blood would swim there. Africa, black paradise with palm trees, on whose tents the gold-washed earrings of its negresses were hanging I from which parrots swung nightwatch of the Sahara. Australia sleeping in the trees was an electrified [menagerie inside a luna park & here Niagara Falls by moonlight hummed with organ-sounds above the Indian burial [grounds & further on above America where they were taking [leave like two ships of a single caliph filled with slaves & cargo, just about to sail. The Bohemian lakes gone green with choruses of frogs remnants smoldering after the storm has passed with the earth flooded out its primitive glory gone [under its oceans unending lighthouses loom like crazed fisherman’s wives [singing songs that await an old sailor’s return who is not coming back This night was ablaze like a necklace. Above the closed windows the earth moved on air like [a crown & the sleepers like sleepwalkers opened the windows A bell rang an alarm. Take over the world! Join the vanguard! & quickly an airplane took off in the night to plant a flag on the battlements high on the crown & behind it flew thousands of airplanes some like spent rockets burning augmenting the legions of stars still others returning like the work-weary builders of [Babylon while those who kept up the struggle formed letters &. words in the stars: Take over the world! Take over the world! Join the vanguard! Swell the numbers of white-hot cigars in the basements make the cities you throw in the air fly like acrobats set up fireworks deep in volcanoes in time for the vintage. Inscribe poems onto clouds more fierce than the gold [of Versailles & let the fire of heaven be joined to the fire of earth. Wrapped in rubberized fireproof bags & careening like balls on the flery beams make the palm trees hide seeds huge as ostrich eggs under their ashes give earth back its harvests let it sprout like a sweet-tasting jungle for the few who endure. & take over the world! Renew Tyrteus’s rock because it doesnt make sense, no not for the sake of [the suicide’s gurgle, the tired man’s gasp that the godhead of healthy humanity perishes because it doesn’t make sense for the mad pilots’ [miracles not to have happened who wake up this night from their sleepwalker’s sleep flying landing on battlements of the nighťs diamond [crown like carrier pigeons with a telegram driving us blind: Take over the world! & the flowers’ blood spatters the coffeehouse [terraces & children are born despite the worlďs prisons & on earth no gold is lost & no platinum’s lost & no fire. To defenestrate sleepwalking men who are blind who saw this night ablaze like a necklace its hieroglyphs still undeciphered & who in the sound of the bell heard their death [knells. Take over the world! & then walk like nomads away from the ponderous lakes of Bohemia where nighťs as green as a chorus of frogs & hear an orchestra of cries & lights & in the rhythms of its drums that clatter like buds of black & white light see the stage front of earth as a mirror laid bare by their searchlights who knew of the need for a miracle to live eternity in one generation & to not lose a moment those whose sleep like their death was lit by clairvoyance as nighťs sleep was lit who joined eternity’s fire with the fire of a moment. This night was ablaze like a necklace. & just then an airplane took off on patrol with a pilot who looked like an airman from 1914 whose shadow fell on the gates of the town with signed proclamations of war & covered the sun until darkness was everywhere. We all watched thru smoke-colored glasses & the old women saw the sign first divined by the [Sibyl: Bohemian nights turning green with frogs in a chorus. But the pilot today was still more appalling a sower who scoops up stars in his lap & casts them like so many seeds on the earth to keep off the fire lying in wait for us when the planet like Joan of Arc twists on the pyre & recants not one word of all that was spoken. 1926 In: Nezval, Vítězslav. Analytic & Other Poems. Translated by Jerome Rothenberg and Miloš Sovák. Edited by Per Bregne. Kobenhavn and Loas Angeles: Green Integer, 2001. pp. 15-22.