The Job Read online

Well anyhow, here I sit and watch

  as the vehicle is not arriving, I await in a bar,

  the goons tell me this is a most infamous place,

  the autopiano will rumble when one puts a fiver

  to it, I drop a fiver to the slot and sit, and drink,

  not to enjoy the taste but to avoid falling behind

  I try to suck enough before the bus leaves

  all the positions are equally excellent

  I change seats

  Näsinneula tower visible through the window,

  with city dwellers erranding on the streets

  they have sun lenses now, it's summer you see

  no leather jackets any more

  like in spring every single person wore

  The anarchists and the green assemble today,

  I wish you luck,

  beware of the cops

  AND UNSHACKLE THE HENS, AND

  THE HORSES AND ALL THE LIVING BEINGS

  at the bus station it is sunny,

  and clear,

  as the weather is dry

  near the bus doors there are men

  standing doing nothing,

  industriously,

  Also I remember how I travelled, back then

  with all the seven hundred years

  exploited again (they fled)

  on an agora when those vomited out of the pubs

  had their swigs on their way back

  TO THEIR BIZARRE TWINKLE EYED NIGHTS

  (WHICH WERE REALLY DAYS,

  THE WITHERED STATEMENT OF

  THE COLLECTOR OF CURIOSITIES)

  I'm sure no one figured that out

  but yes, you know those Rimbaud-literate punks

  on the backyards of stations, the beaming ghosts

  who have rummaged through all the parties

  and licked all pussies and swept the bottom

  of every single gutter and slept in jail and asserted:

  WE LIVE

  Bugger

  the deacon devils are coming this way,

  do I have time to hide, no

  they yearn to help

  after they heard our money is scarce,

  I am so temped to kick them to their kneecaps

  oh you poor thing, let us help you

  how they would rejoice if they were allowed

  to donate a bagful of pastries

  Please, you do not understand

  in this village we have so few of you poor wretches

  the vibes we get from giving!

  and our assistant sextoness, that strange

  concoction of sledge user and seamstress

  she wanted to help me most intimately,

  she asked to carry me in her renovated Buick

  TO LOOK AT HER FURNITURE

  Wish that car runs over the sexton

  I hope with a good conscience, he said

  once, you know

  when a Camaro almost lucked,

  Oh, that was a close call,

  such a joyous corpse you were about to get

  And that measly hag,

  that vintage slime, Lady Comrade

  wanders a slide rule in her pocket,

  measures minutes to the next coffee break,

  she manages flowerbeds,

  she left her home, so she tells,

  once upon a time in search for money

  to claim her own, came here to spend a year

  and stayed a decade, poor Lady Lost

  Nowadays she is bound to go ballistic over trifles

  she fights over power with the sexton

  and never gets it

  but she can still bully us with her tongue,

  she wraps it around our heads

  and over our ears, she hexes us, she homogenizes

  When the free birds sing

  and the mind soars

  like the rake by the sunny, red ochre wall

  she strikes! – hauls herself after you and flows

  slowly over your head

  Its so hot,

  Watch it

  You will loose that zeal

  Yes, that is so,

  You see,

  Namely so

  I now keep a stash of bog roll in my pocket

  I roll earplugs from it

  I AM WAITING FOR A NEW SPRING,

  AND IT WILL COME

  OR THE END OF THE WORLD, IT –

  PERHAPS THESE STONES

  RISE TO WALK NEXT NIGHT, PERHAPS

  THE INFATUATED GRASS WILL SURGE SOON,

  perhaps you will take my mind from me

  All the movements hasten the dubious outcome

  gravel rolls in the slope,

  my voice carries beyond the night

  there is still some future left

  every single step wears its sole

  and when this day has run dry,

  I will vanish into my hut in the grove

  do not come

  Again

  I am startled awake

  as the sun hits its needles into my eyes

  infuses this foliage with fire

  eye splits open

  one step,

  and I descend to the valley,

  to count the stones and to dig

  In the café

  there is a phone booth,

  a slimy prism all quiet, no tinkle

  in Camaro are the dudes with their pop machines

  thump, thuddy, thud: life on debt

  heck, let's just steal

  they are about to face a wall

  on top of which are sitting

  the ancient Elders who state

  you shall not pass

  The Old, chained to rock,

  the windless, sneezy heroes

  utter their foul vocabulary silently,

  in all seriousness

  I also want a new tomorrow

  and a player and into it ten metric tons of Ministry

  Crows, friends in their black capes

  ranting in spruces

  caw, caw,

  awk,

  I clap my hands and they quieten to listen

  Get back to work!

  the sexton roars,

  Move

  No sitting there

  I wasn't sitting, dammit

  I have pushed this mower

  for two hours now, I thought I pant a little

  on the pretext that I am filling this basin

  he looks sideways

  and then comes to whisper

  listen, I don't mind

  even if you rest sometimes, I am not a monster but

  not when there are people here

  do you mean the woman who was just here, yes

  Did you know

  that EMOTION does not move stone,

  hide that warmer hand to the pocket

  bite your jawbone, now we tackle the real waltz

  O Fiskars

  The sexton heard, felt, calculated, that is,

  he inferred everything in his youth

  he calculated the odds like Pascal

  and invested in the eternity

  apprentices such an ancient doctrine

  and now he speaks the lexicon of stone to us

  and grinds mere chaff and scabs to our soles

  No matter

  this is the real deal, the master league

  the sexton is familiar with

  the charm of the absolute power, he tells us

  about the graves

  to which the church has sold eternal care

  But from those care contracts though –

  What about them?

  One should get rid of.

  Oh, how can you do that?

  By annulling the agreement one-sidedly,

  he says and grins

  In the afternoon, Zeke personally,

  the chief executive

  of all the cemeteries of the city comes to scold

  come here, got something to tell you

  I am walked into
the cool

  of the parish meeting hall

  to confront a full jury, very serious

  you have reputedly been loafing

  no I have not

  and been telling women what to do with it

  seriously not

  I've already formed an opinion

  about you take care it doesn't –

  (right, just as me about you)

  I will indeed start dawdling,

  if this is the name of the game

  I return home,

  I wonder what has happened meanwhile

  I can see the transformations

  but how morphs all that I cannot see

  the job, the family, a child,

  this all was chosen just out of curiosity

  would you like, the woman asked, I don't know

  what will it be like, I asked

  you will find out

  fine

  So we got our stuff together and started moving

  as car combat trucks, on adjacent rails,

  pedal to the metal and machine gun

  resounding in the face every day

  that's the spirit

  the heat dissipates as the years add up

  not giving up yet, though

  Is it an expedition, one which cannot be excused?

  Are you still aboard?

  How about your camera? Broke it?

  Yes, I'll try to explain to myself,

  what I'm doing here

  I invent a good tale, really quite fine

  Night falls over us and in the morning

  I will leave the explanation behind

  and step forward

  (as you aren't going anywhere else)

  watch: and what you see is altered,

  the attempt to describe remains an attempt

  and that is all you got, a fragment

  This is a silent

  the sun falls from its track

  the adventure looses its momentum

  and sticks in a marsh

  and nothing is real but Revolution

  (do not trust that either;

  do not expect a blow

  from the anticipated direction:

  the one who then hits you, cheats)

  I eat canned food, cardboard, anything I have here

  I am scornful, witty and resourceful, I play chess

  I put a gas mask over my face

  and stuff the plugs in my ears,

  I pass by, rattling

  yes we are building this country

  with the healthy hobbies

  we fight the old men, we sit in the pool caves

  get drunk and throw sticks

  put on black tights and

  engage in rhythmic physical exercise,

  martial arts mayhem

  Earth and Moon

  Rest comes as part of seven day series,

  attention, at ease, Earth chasing Moon

  around wanton axis thrown into space

  (the breathers will be paid the next day)

  you have the night

  I have the day

  no, wait

  it's night here too

  In the evening, together, we relocate

  equipment and microbes, chick and dude, thus

  and then we go watch the BOX or knock the backs

  of the books hunching peevishly in the shelf : hello

  browse through a page or two,

  and slip into slumber

  (yes, yes, your embroidered worlds were retrieved

  but OUR genius is unrivalled)

  To the voids,

  prominences, dreams

  ha ha ha

  nothing is permanent, still everything

  is still the same

  such is Revolution,

  I am altered just like you, and the nipper

  the henchman of the chaos, two years old

  in our time line

  That little boy,

  I cannot see, the motion is too quick to be sensed

  AS THE MOTION OF STONES

  AS THE SPEED OF PLANTS

  I stand on a deserted station, my compass

  filled with water

  at some aloof rails, far from the WIDER paths

  and somewhere out there

  are the Whitecaps

  No bearing

  only environments I find likeable

  this morning the light arrives again unchanged

  and the rational monkey escapes

  into his caves to scrape lottery tickets

  and his old, blood-red drawings with steel wool

  DID YOU SEE

  THE FERTILE LAND, YOU INFIDEL DOGS?

  The colleague

  sits in the cockpit, shakes

  according to the laws of mechanics

  I am tailing, I handle

  hydraulic arms and change my spot

  MY EYE RESPONDS TO THE PRESSING OF

  THE PEDAL! I AM STEEL, I AM VULGARIZED

  RUBBER AND SIMULTANEOUSLY THE

  BALANCE INDICATOR KNOCKS NUMISMATICS

  TO THE RIGHT EDGE OF MY COGNIZANCE!

  (just rust in peace the small nagging appliance

  which I tried to lose carefully, somewhere, to forge

  the question of why and whereto from here)

  And finally,

  after countless steps I can lower my hand

  to a device

  manufactured by anonymous machinery

  which I connect

  as part of the industry that is my life and say:

  this is MINE

  In the pale green sea of buds

  the elder lady from the village

  a priestess (the cleric's missus) passes by, stinking

  of old habsburgian

  fragrance and surely does not remember

  how many drops of sweat

  and frogman's skins were required

  to raise her goo from a sunken galeas

  From the hill one can see the hinterlands

  lead-grey lake, devoid of swimmers

  sucked for drinking water to the fallen,

  to the stalks of grass, to the framed roses,

  to the transcending trees

  amidst where the tractor

  is dancing its insane dance

  Behind the bell tower the bunnies

  are bounding happily in the heather

  while on the road the motorists bound forward

  or maybe backwards, as time is just an agreement,

  they look very small and somehow

  helpless (hospital beds also boast with wheels)

  I just do this

  sure aren't Hungarian aluminium sledges these

  and the extremes of heat, and the sparkling light

  and the soil is so hard

  like fossilized bone and tractor tires,

  the spade thumps

  to the dense bottom under a thin lump layer,

  Hey, boy! laugh the hoes in their Chevies

  laughs King Whopper on his way to the world

  when you have torn bark from those birches

  enter, and forget

  enter the world

  when the machines have traversed these lands,

  and left their traces,

  absorbed oat, nectar and fragrances,

  so that now, my friend

  (you may not notice,

  but you walk on an ancient land)

  the soil is brittle

  and lifeless

  and the dreams of mountains

  harden to stone and talk to you

  like the Originals talk at night

  Yes, we strive for ecological friendliness

  Good, then you know

  mulch would be perfect for those –

  he pretends not to hear, walks farther

  – JUST SAYING THAT

  FOR THOSE BUSHES, BARK MULCH –

  he sneers, quarrels with Lady Comrade,

  the matron lifts the tank

 
on her back and starts to spray

  A short coffee party

  in memory of the man who dropped off a scaffold

  after the devotional, cake and gingerbread,

  the cleric gets up to lead the chanting,

  man in his fifties, bald,

  white square covering the apple

  a docile teddy bear robe hiding the hot temper

  The village patriarchs stare

  at the summer helps

  at this undisciplined,

  incompetent plastic generation,

  they watch

  searching for a grip and tire

  this weather taxes resources, the youngsters know

  (and still hardly on their trip yet)

  bit of cake, hymn and away

  what? the birds chanting too, scoundrels

  with their toothless mouths?

  At the stop

  I am waiting

  with my honourable bag beside me

  this fatigue, this repose, these rare eternities

  are, and will be paid

  with the sweat of seventy times seven days

  there's a salt stone for you, you lick that

  AND WE RUSH TO THE STREETS,

  TO THE PARKS TO DANCE

  TO SHAKE TO SWAY

  INTO THE MEMORY BOMB BLUE HAZE

  You bastards

  ready to fly, comrade, wings cut, Friday night

  fever in Tula or Tampere or Wherever

  I WAS ABOUT TO SOAR!

  I ATE FROGS FOR SUPPER,

  I TRAVELLED WITH MY BODY

  UNVEILED THROUGH THE FIERY NOON

  I WAS A SHREWD MADCAP,

  I SAVED MY WORLD

  I GLIDED OVER THE EASTERN SEA, I WAS

  THE LEADER OF ONE THOUSAND BIRDS,

  I WAS BEYOND THE CLOUDS

  IN THE BURNING SKY, I WAS AN APE

  IN THE DEPTHS OF SUMMER

  The night turns its blind eye on us

  twangg, the mad

  voodoo popper plays obscure French porn pop

  with two pastel soft tit guitars hanging

  around his neck, I marvel what that suggests

  I have been now

  awake since three

  the stones were dreaming me and I woke

  flinching: no rest for me

  in the darkness, any more?

  Let me be a barnacle

  at the feet of stones, let me be

  a flea at flea market in the land of plantains

  YOU, THE GUILTY ONE, COME OUT! I shout

  the chick kicks me out of bed:

  get busy, let me sleep

  (duller than her television

  slower than her car)

  but this is not a fair game

  or is this a game

  YOU BLUDGEONED ME WITH WOOD,

  SHATTERED TO THE SEASHORE,

  THERE I SOLD MY PRECIOUS TIME

  AND LEFT, TO BUY IT BACK

  AS SMALL FRAGMENTS

  later on, these times will be different

  Not doing too well if you start liking work like this,

  comrade says first thing in the morning

  HOW SPACE AND DIMENSIONS

  FLOW WHEN YOU WALK

  a howling piece of world hurls from the radio

  into my lap, "however, a piece of three metres was snapped

  in a March storm", was written in it

  I JOURNEYED TO THE MOON

  DURING THE COFFEE BREAK

  in what storm,

  I do not know,

  I have not heard

  is there a storm here

  I cannot repair the dreams

  turned over by the furiously flailing branches

  the sexton fucks with me, says

  that my missus likes me for sure

  how so

  since you do everything so slowly

  on the road, toddlers

  shamble to the Sunday school

  such a strange village

  And the chosen ones

  marry to fuck the fellows of the Cross

  thinking only about it, on tables,

  on leather sofas on a Sabbath,

  on holy divans, fuck the fellows of the Cross,

  wear their brown skin like shampoo

  On office tables

  pushing erasers, rubber bands, binders, and

  phones to the floor and fuck fellows of the Cross,

  groaning on the linoleum, hunting for you

  to rush to the green sources,

  to spread over all earth, and they know

  intimately your woman who is Fertility

  in their arched office residing in utter silence

  (and I traced you

  to the sunset, all in vain)

  as the fire and the world in us

  and we have two worlds

  and we were given The Choice and The Equation

  and in the equation

  there were a billion unknown stars

  and we made our decision

  I go to a gas station

  and have a coffee, I look at the video games

  living dead are blasted there

  they seem to splash into smithereens

  just like anyone else

  the air returns everything, nothing sticks to it

  just try

  our last joke, and you don't have a clue

  you lungfish

  let us burn the Earth

  scorch with fire into dwellings,

  let the smith forge

  in his workshop wonders for the markets

  while we fall, torn, through the fluffy air

  In the evening on the streets

  the work goes on

  the walk method will probably lead somewhere

  (meticulously, left, and right – it is an advantage)

  (as a stranger here, quite without bounds,

  unwilling to return

  to retrace to the crossing where you

  stepped on the roadless and went astray)

  women whose wombs are waiting for the seed

  whose lips curve to a smile

  a plastic bag rustles

  in man's hand, in the bag a lonely melon

  the man weighs too much,

  his trainers bruise asphalt, don't

  you remember how I helped you, the sea asks

  no, the man replies

  On the bus

  a skinny girl gnaws an apple, quietly, timidly

  crosses her arms and sleeps

  only in her dreams she has might and grace

  when the truck drivers trample through all her days

  and we,

  when we ask for a home, we are given

  one hundred metres of corrugated titanium

  although we do not know what it is,

  or what we should do with it

  my head aches

  the storm is coming,

  They will soon rope us to the roof,

  to guide the union of heaven and earth

  back together and whole

  for as the ring does not break

  so will not break the strongest link of the chain

  comrade in the afternoon

  comrade in the sun of the afternoon, hurries

  through the series of movements, disappears

  comrade knows well

  when we will end up

  as lightning rods on the roof ridge

  he has worked long and hard on these lands,

  very long

  old hardy, he knows

  Now Lady Comrade has snitched on old hardy,

  said he has been idling on the site

  he was promptly demoted to clean rose bushes

  the tractor weeps black diesel tears in the shed

  man longs for his grease nipples

  (I have never loitered at work, it's all bullshit!)

  I walk under spruces, I look at an ant hill,

  they build and then some more,

  have one
second breaks, what are they thinking

  (who has passed through these paths, who has

  toiled these monotonous gestures for decades,

  knows the steps and can tell the rhythm

  it must be possible, You can't tire so easily

  those too are still moving

  they are alive, roughly)

  The sparrows twitter

  in the bushes, they inform, from that

  hyperdupermall you can find sunflower seeds

  the sexton

  clothes himself in his dwarven stockiness and grins

  (he noticed me exiting the thicket)

  stealing time I see

  and pushing the carts

  with such a diligent look, he mocks

  He comes to mess up along,

  gives advices and swings the tool

  like an ordinary man

  (for the sake of fitness you know,

  while you inspect and trade quips)

  then he

  grabs a machine and wanders around the fields

  while others are pulling harrows

  Look now he mucks up all the paths

  Right, so what are you gonna do?

  I adjust pebbles, decorate flower nests, spray

  mowers, hit the gas and no fingers to the blades

  scrupulously and rapidly, straighten headstones,

  300 kilos of granite

  barely misses the metatarsuses

  the decoration is pried back up

  we start looking for remnants of the geraniums

  and still the larder appears to be empty

  it is empty

  Do you realize

  without compromising

  the thought the heart the arms

  fall in poem, fall in thinking, merely fall

  I am here just leaving traces, so

  STEPS IN THE SAND, SUCCUMB!

  STEPS ON THE COASTLINE,

  EARN THE ETERNAL GREEN BEYOND!

  STEPS BY THE EDGE OF SPACE, COME TO US

  WHEN THE STONES ARE COVERED

  WITH WRITING! (and they will)

  And still we share the seats in the same lifeboat

  somewhere,

  in the midst of its nature, the monkey sleeps

  and wanders

  insanely happy:

  I AM BRILLIANT! I HAVE DISCOVERED!

  I AM ALIVE! AND HEAR, O blind,

  deaf and numb!

  your bright blade has hit the darkness!

  Do you still expect us to decipher

  your math homework with you? WRONG

  your enumerable days, what are they to me? my

  imaginary lights are interspersed

  among the calculated ones and decree

  the number and substance of them, their bearing

  Perhaps these steps will disappear without a trace

  do I wish them engraved to this rock, no

  it will not happen, the waters come and go

  tone the muscles and retard their genius

  no, that will hardly come to pass

  I see myself too surprised in the mirror

  I descend in the current deeper , every day

  dozing,

  I wake up

  when my bus spits me out watyumbleh –

  In the city there is a chick who has mid-calf boots

  and mini skirt

  and she sits on the opposite

  to change her flea market boots

  legs spread out and boy she really takes her time

  good old city

  the gloomy, old, proper shit pile

  well, we came here to cheat time,

  there is no degeneration here, at these crossroads

  and if incidentally there is, it is disguised

  as a babyface

  O city, press me between your tits

  you can be old, I don't care

  (I can hear

  how her nails reach out far, groping

  dirt and life and the sun and time

  from where it is so swift it seems stopped)

  Tonight I will walk again

  imagine I went to play heliotropic bridge

  if it makes you feel more beautiful

  there is sort of truth to it

  I move my feet around in smoky rooms

  clank my mugs

  in search for glitter

  are there bombs in the jukebox?

  who's gonna blow my mind?

  can I sell my my gland buzz today?

  hey, can I get some heavenly light here please

  that

  is heliotropism

  Ask by all means,

  only you don't really want answers

  but answers that sound lovely

  and I perform already pretty well I think,

  break patterns at times, slake lime and mummify

  stay steadfastly in bed

  (oh, how I slept in again today ...and the nap...)

  The calendar was invented in courtesan's embrace

  AND WE ARE BREEZE

  AND WILLOWHERB CANDY FLOSS

  AND FANTASIES OF THE AIR

  and there is a Letter in my dream

  and in that letter there is a stroke in the stone

  I bend down to study the writing

  and right away someone hurries by me

  and cries: HEY, come to play with us!

  he has a doomsday device

  under his arm, levers and joints

  I am still, I watch, and wait, and see

  how the cry gets written to the stone

  I rise exactly the right time,

  I continue my journey, frolic

  I pull trucks with my teeth, spoon the bitter soup

  from the same bowls as others, cross out to mark,

  and simultaneously I sense how

  IN THE SILENCE OF THE FOREST

  THE STONE WRITES ITS WILD LONELINESS

  never responds although all to the woods cry

  go there,

  my friends (and the rest of you, especially)

  Take the time machine

  see, your bayonets are all rusty

  bury them in the ground,

  or you drive them through your guts

  do you hear me (my love)

  this is the spoken language of the stone

  these sentences can break darning needles

  perhaps you know:

  if you pace on a cliff, your feet will get its shape

  but how can YOU walk

  with such impeccable ease??

  Difficult to see

  yesterday I visited the old man's house,

  there were relatives there

  I saw such a reproachful silence

  in the eyes of my cousin

  when she recognized a consanguinity

  something memorable, which has been forgotten

  carelessly, deliberately

  (it's all fabrication for me and nothing more, so foreign)

  Today we are among ourselves,

  the armours are sleeping by the road

  and it's a warm, mirror calm evening of June

  you carry a glass of wine with you as we talk

  and the children are swimming

  and we are catching up with reality

  they run, three girls over a long pier

  headlong into the lake splash, splash,

  splash,

  more children on another side of the strait,

  three as well, they dive likewise

  I will remember this

  when I am gone my memory will persist

  and keep carrying this with you

  and I will remember:

  I too lived here

  this I would tell up against the eternity

  if the divine herald came to me, to state:

  your words will stay

  that I TOO LIVED HERE

  Stroke

  in the colours in the sounds in gravitation

  our dreams

&nb
sp; in the virtuous thoughts, in the wicked ones

  and after you are crammed

  through the omnipresent crystal shredder

  you can hardly discern one from the other

  In the soft curves of breast

  in booze jugs, stars long neglected by gods

  our sleep

  when they come to inquire

  do not listen to what they say

  be mindful,

  they are writing to the stone just like you

  and most importantly,

  ANSWER VERY SLOWLY

  AS IF IT INDEED

  HAD SOME SIGNIFICANCE TO YOU

  The crow swarm takes flight

  from an old, wooden (abandoned) pharmacy

  behind the chemist's shop there is the lake,

  it is large

  and hundreds of church boats have cut through it

  back when we still worshipped

  the ground the cleric walked on, and listened

  to the BIG voice

  A woman and a man rise from the shore,

  in the gentle willowherb candy floss rain

  the woman with young, blue hair

  the man with shaken, grey power,

  he glances fuzzily around

  with a resemblance to a hastily dressed coat

  if I only had a small craft here

  and on a thwart a kantele

  and the large inland lake before me,

  like an ash-grey storm

  Thunder

  is it still that severe Dude

  of the midsummer? Or the one more tired,

  aged August rumble drawing away?

  No – He still hurls hammers,

  listen,

  how the air

  the monkey breathes,

  breaks, and boils

  See how it tears its way, in angular lines, vertically

  up from the ground towards the ink blue clouds

  for which, by the way

  we still do not have wings

  —

  I am sitting

  and listening

  this is a natural way to be

  to sit somewhere, to be done

  preferably devoid of thoughts

  the child comes

  asks what are those are bugs there on the window

  Well, they –

  Musca domestica

  Aglais urticae, Anax imperator

  Coccinella septempunctata O amagad

  UNSHACKLE UNSHACKLE UNSHACKLE

  —

  About Agluppos:

  Agluppos writes mainly in Finnish. This is translation of the Finnish original, called 'Duuni'.

  Other Books by Agluppos:

  The Art of Deathmatch

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