Vladimir Holan: The Chicken

The doors open by themselves
before an angel. At other times a chicken
comes from the courtyard into the kitchen
and looks round at the company with so critical an eye
that they do not wait to see how it will end
but quickly cross themselves in self-defence.


Tr. Jarmila and Ian Milner. Written in 1950s Czechoslovakia, when poetry with angels and crossing oneself could be dangerous. Aside from that, there's something characteristically Central European in the deadpan mixture of the numinous and the domestic.