Contempo- rary Slovenian poetry 2 - Ljudmila

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Aleš Debeljak (b. 1961) graduated in comparative literature from the University of Ljubljana and received his Ph.D. in Social Thought from the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, Syracuse University, New York. He was a Senior Fulbright fellow at the University of California, Berkeley and a fellow of the Institute of Advanced Study - Collegium Budapest. Debeljak has published twelve books of essays and seven books of poems in his native Slovenian. A translator of a book of selected poems by John Ashbery and a book on the sociology of knowledge, he has also edited an anthology of American metafiction and published a book of critical essays on American literature. He won the Prešeren Foundation Prize, the Miriam Lindberg Israel Poetry for Peace Prize, the Chiqyu Poetry Prize and was named Ambassador of Science of the Republic of Slovenia. He has edited Serbian, Croatian and Slovenian sections for Shifting Borders: East European Poetries in the Eighties and Prisoners of Freedom: Contemporary Slovenian Poetry. A founding editor of the Sarajevo Notebooks magazine and a contributing editor of the Verse magazine, Debeljak is also a general editor of Terra Incognita: Writings from Central Europe, a series of books published by White Pine Press, Buffalo, New York. Photo by Erica Johnson Debeljak 14 Aleš Debeljak Books in translation Rječnik tišine, Zagreb: Quorum, 1989, 2002 The Chronicle of Melancholy, Chattanooga: Poetry Miscellany, 1989 Slownik Ciszy, Krakow: Cassiopeia, 1992 Momenti d’Angoscia, Napoli: Flavio Pagano Editore, 1993 Anxious Moments, Fredonia: White Pine Press, 1994 A csend szotara, Pecs- Budapest: Jelenkor Kiado, 1996 Katalog prachu, Olomouc: Votobia, 1996 Shisyuu fuan na jikoku, Tokyo: Kashinsya, 1997 Grad i djete, Zagreb: Meandar, 1998 Mesto a dite, Prague: Mlada Fronta Press, 1999 The Dictionary of Silence, Santa Fe: Lumen Press, 1999 The City and the Child, Buffalo, New York: White Pine Press, 1999 Miasto i dziecko, Krakow: Zielona Sowa, 2000 Minutes de la peur, Pézenas: Domens, 2001 Skice za povratak: izabrane pesme, Banja Luka – Beograd: Zadužbina Petar Kočić, 2001 Netobula žoždio aistra, Vilnius: Lietuvos Raštoju Sajungos Leidykla, 2001 Kaupunki ja lapsi, Helsinki: Nihil Interit, 2002 Izabrani Pesni, Skopje: Blesok, 2004 Ispod povrsine, Zagreb: HDP, 2006 La ciutat i el nen, Barcelona: Edicions La Guineu, 2006
A Letter Home I long for a comfort that cannot be measured, forgotten caves where Bach can’t reach, the bell that sounds for a monarchy not found on any globe, for the feverish concentration of hunters who oil and polish their guns. I long for the salt that tears contain, the marrow that boils in my bones, I long for the miracle opening up like a mouth when nothing comes out. If I am the only one listening, the percussion of grace in my loins is what I become, pulling the trigger like no one has taught me and no one would know how to gauge. Alone on a trail that nobody knows I follow the line of your neck. Your head is tilted back, I give myself to whatever it is that strains my muscles and forces me to flower like the scatter a shotgun fires, singing at last from a single place called Rome, Medina, Jerusalem, which is home to me as only one place can be. Cast Vote That crystal morning, snow over snow: in capital cities they might be ashamed of it. That conference of birds, and light upon water, the parliament of dreams, and knowing no fear of getting old, and she, alone this winter morning, her face that sees itself within a flower etched by ice along the glass, her reflection thawing and piercing the window: she is austere and never so strange, outside her shadow sputters again like a match refusing gravity and singe. In the vast expanse of frost and worry, not even a minute to think, she was the one with the courage to disobey silence, she could not be voted down and said: Look, in the shallows of this common river the Black Sea claims as its own, fish still wriggle out of a boy’s hands, tracing a perfect arc, and with them everything that flows, everything that falls, rushes without reason as one’s childhood rushes by— look: we are not a wall but a shutter some far-off god is opening halfway. 15
Page 1 and 2: Maja Haderlap Maja Vidmar Alojz Iha
Page 3 and 4: what used to be once a year, when b
Page 5 and 6: even say stay tonight let your hair
Page 7 and 8: The Couple We are alone on a desert
Page 9 and 10: the way I do. Use hopeless flights
Page 11 and 12: Casting out the devil Bought at an
Page 13: God could not keep a straight face
Page 17 and 18: Drowned Love Translated by Andrew Z
Page 19 and 20: The Moon Will Cover Me I have two a
Page 21 and 22: your eyes two slits of dark. Above,
Page 23 and 24: Garden, Bach There is no death here
Page 25 and 26: kneaded into our daily bread by tho
Page 27 and 28: Hatchet in a Knot Father, it is tim
Page 29 and 30: should scratch my forehead, turn my
Page 31 and 32: Pagan Death Translated by Marjan Go
Page 33 and 34: Translated by Marjan Golobič in a
Page 35 and 36: Revolution after a whole night and
Page 37 and 38: saying anything. then, by the time
Page 39 and 40: Depression How can I not feel torme
Page 41 and 42: which my relatives, the vultures, d
Page 43 and 44: The Trubar Foundation is a joint ve

Contempo- rary Slovenian poetry 2 - Ljudmila

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