Ondřej Smetana - Vítkovice High Expedition

As long as you don't believe in wings, do not take off / when it comes, look straight above yourself / take off and rise higher and higher / until the thin air clears your mind / then press your wings to your body / enjoy the drop / do not spread and welcome to freedom

I have never made a fool of myself in February / my life was as quiet as midnight and sad as September / a happier nation let them love and know carnival / Těšín looked into my cradle - you read it from my face

Whose are you, tall beauty?
She walks alone, proudly gazing,
books in hand, at my greeting,
never has a reply,

dark-skinned, dark-haired
her gaze sparkles like a star in twilight,
little feet, every move
a swan’s glide across the lake,
do you want to be only a hopeless
dark reminder of love?
What to call the princess of my dreams?
Let me call you Little Swan!

I am right, and children
he is vulgar to the last table
he scribbles through the pub
with skinny, veiny stories
Japanese waitress from Přívoz
with blue eyes
With a bottle's voice
the pub laughs
full of Japanese hair
torn from contexts
around is Ostrava
and children

With dawn defenseless
dazed
Brothers and sisters
brothers and sisters
brothers and sisters
Dust and sand
Whores

I chewed and swallowed fog,
phantoms passed me, softly brushed against me,
dissolving...

the road to the northeast

down Místecká
whooshing under the towers,
is not enough
if you want to know the song of the northeast and the furnace
get on the iron road
race through murky air
until
the iron cemetery cheers

...there, where the fog drifts between the towers like glowing incense, a gray city, sad as a grave with blooming chrysanthemums, where the wide cold hangs on facades like a tapestry...

through fog so dense it could be cut...trams ride for free

So be it. Go. As yesterday to you,
destiny will step on my neck next time
hard to live from morning to evening,
one of us not finding refuge.
To him, the yoke of the tribe lay on his neck
to him, the woman poisoned life
pain drives him like a whip -
the track, brother, only the sweet track remains!


Tundras and brothels, how life goes on. And suddenly we handle some
of the dull things in this world so tenderly and precisely, that the doghouse of vanity
pauses in silence.


Must it be that what is our bliss becomes in return the source of our misery?

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