Wednesday, June 20, 2007

Popa

In response to the discussion about Tate, here's one of my favorite poems by Vasko Popa (translated by Charles Simic):

Floornail

One is the nail another is pliers
The rest are carpenters

The pliers grab the nail by the head
With their teeth and arms they grab it
And keep pulling and pulling
Pulling it out of the floor
Usually they just wring its head off
It's hard pulling a nail out of the floor

The carpenters then say
These pliers are lousy
They crush its jaws break its arms
And throw them out of the window

Then someone else is a floornail
Another is pliers
The rest are carpenters

1 Comments:

Blogger Ana Božičević said...

Yes, I see what you mean! I love this one.

8:59 PM  

Post a Comment

<< Home