Moravian Beeches

             for Claude Louis-Combet

after a long sunny walk
there came a rough footpath
then crossing the Ondrejnice
by a libidinal bridge toward
the dark forest facing us down
off the slope

crisscrossed by roots
rocks heaped here and there
the path passed by the foot of a white ash
scraped into its bark a mandorla
and its vulva arch

the last rays of the afternoon were tickling
the naked beech trees
their trunks with scarred eyes

things took a turn
at the spiderweb
in the trunk split into a trident
two large orbits the mouth hole
under the nose hole a filigree and
vibrating death-mask
that left us speechless

witches rode the Moravian
mare of nightmares
those maleficent ones unleashed
storms and desires
into the country of the Inquisition
where Institoris searched for words
and plants to hammer open the spirit
then disappeared once and for all

near the Hukvaldy beeches
Janáček composed in F
the melody torn from rumbling thunder
to expand music
these same Hochwald beeches were
the little secret paradise of Freud who
in ingenious insight dreamed of
leaving behind the empire of his empiricism

the unconscious made of sonorous sylvan groves
full of white holes was up till then
the domain of female fortune tellers

Freud no longer wrote vain love poems
we never found Janáček’s bench
the storm took aim at the little hills
where Janáček dawdled
and Freud delayed leaving home

                          Translated from the French by Matt Reeck