The Last Night Bus
The last night bus echoes away
into the depth
of the night's
spinal cord.
Stars shiver
unless they explode.
There are no other civilizations.
Only the gentle
galactic fear
based on methane.
Teaching About Arthropods
The male mite Adactylidium
hatches in his mother's body,
gobbles her up from the inside,
while mating
with all his seven
little sisters.
So, when he's born,
it's as if he were dead:
he's been through it all
and he's freelance,
in the bull's-eye,
in the focus
of extracurricular existence:
an absolute poet,
non-segmented,
non-antennated,
eightlegged.
Distant Howling
In Alsace,
on July 6, 1885,
a rabid dog knocked Joseph Meister down
and bit him fourteen times.
Meister was the first patient
saved by Pasteur's
vaccine, in thirteen
gradually increased doses
of weakened virus.
Pasteur died of ictus
ten years later.
Fifty years later
the watchman Meister
committed suicide
when the Germans
occupied Pasteur's institute
including the poor dogs.
Only the virus
never got involved.
When the Bees Grew Silent
An old man
suddenly died
alone in his garden
under an elderberry bush.
He lay there until dark
when the bees
grew silent.
It was a beautiful death, wasn't it,
Doctor, says
the woman in black
who comes to the garden
as always
every Sunday,
and in her bag brings
lunch for two.
The Dead
After the third operation, his heart
pierced like an old carnival target,
he woke in his bed and said:
Now I'll be fine,
like a sunflower. And have you ever
seen horses make love?
He died that night.
And another one plodded on for eight
milk-and-water-years
like a long-haired water plant
in a sour creek,
as if he stuck his pale face out
on a skewer from behind
the graveyard wall.
Finally the face disappeared.
In both cases the angel of death
stamped his hobnailed boot
on their medulla oblongata.
I know they died the same death.
But I don't believe they're dead
in the same way.
_____________________
MIROSLAV HOLUB
Interferon, or On Theater
translated from the Czech by
David Young and Dana Habova
Field, 1982
