• Zlati čoln
• Delavnica
• Festivali
• Simpoziji
• Literarne turneje
• Srečanja

• galerija
• arhiv
• podpirajo nas
• kontakt

IN THE KARST
(Golden Boat Workshop, Skocjan 2008)

Morning of wind and clouds and stinging nettles,
of pines and limestone’s dizzying falls,
wild chicory, orange lily, the smoke bush
plotting its riot of winter flames.

How irresistible is your body now,
bathing in a pool of the Reka River
or walking to a free translator’s dinner
through homesteads honoured as towns by roadside names

or sitting sun-kissed on a ledge of rock,
a Buddha showered with sunlit leaves?
How taken are you by the beauties here
in a landscape of sinkholes and abysses?

One calls you by your name and suddenly
a transient poet is at ease,
morning a mottled light on water and stone
as the river enters the cave, then disappears.

 
THE WHITE MULE

The white mule’s throat marks the passing of time,
an angelus braying. The tide has one tune for always,
a tune with a turning. Mussels in rock crevices
pray for the sea to turn its tune, to come back
swollen with nutrients, swill over them again.
The sky and the sea are quite an item, and lead
an exemplary couple’s life: one is not bright
while the other is dark, though on some skyless days
the sea in the distance seems to laugh to itself,
as if not just the presence but the thought of the sky
could brighten it. The tide has one tune for always,
and the bray of the white mule marks time for the land,
its pale green fields, its hillocks, cottages and crows.
I would speak backwards as a child, into my throat,
and everyone laughed at the strange ebbing sound of words.

IF...

If you go from the small to the bigger picture,
a sparrow scampering away from you,
running along the path at the side
of the house, not flying, not taking off,
if you include the stone wall with its crevices,
gaps where the mortar has crumbled,
a man-made cleft in stone to hold a key,
if you include a nest somewhere, the sparrow running
to draw you away, a decoy manoeuvre,
if you include the teetering stems of roses
rising for light, if you include montbretia,
that’s red and orange so far and a brown bird,
if you include the ivy’s green
and the russet-and-gold creeper, move up
and beyond them to the children screaming
in the school playground behind the wall,
that’s three o’clock and includes time
as well as space, if you pause in your watching
to light a cigarette, that’s an issue of health,
addiction and satisfaction, reflection
on the history of the tobacco leaf,
if you reflect on the question of why
you began with a sparrow and remember
you wanted to know where it would lead you,
if it’s leading you away from the nest
or if it’s running scared and no nest there,
if you search for the nest in the crevices
man-made in stone or gaps in the mortar
and pausing to look at the high roses
leads your eye to a break in the clouds
and the sparrow is overshadowed by
a plane with its landing lights blinking,
if soon it will be night and no way back,
only the questions in your sleepless head –
what is this sparrow, where does it come from,
where does the whole universe come from,
what’s cosmic about a solitary sparrow,
do the children shout in the playgrounds
of their dreams, do they dream of tomorrow,
if tomorrow is possible, if the night
is such a wide river to have to cross...

Avtorji