Contempo- rary Slovenian poetry 2 - Ljudmila

The Couple
We are alone
on a deserted island.
Waiting for a ship
that may not come.
We are alone,
a woman and a man.
He is nothing in particular,
with particularities,
not my thing,
but on an island there is no other,
neither for me nor for him.
We are alone
on a deserted island.
Every day stretched on the rack
between yes and no.
Every day is worse
than sex.
Worst of all is the fear
that I will spot the ship
and the shore will have to be
abandoned in the middle of the movie.
Each day is a gift
of delay.
The House
7
With father’s milk
I drank
the solid architecture
of the house,
and yet in these rooms
every evening
I covered up my head.
There was no doubt:
out in the open they would
have come, those who are not,
they would have devoured me.
It is hard
with a house in your head.
In the evening I sit
at the back door
crying out for them,
those who are not.
Idyll
It’s no coincidence that you and I
and the two children found ourselves
in the lift. Even when