Ivan Dobnik - Vilenica

mlada vilenica 2011 / young vilenica award 2011 · 425
The winner of the 11th Young Vilenica Award in the 14–15
year age category is Lara Ružič Povirk, an eighth-grader from
Elementary School Sostro, Ljubljana, for the poem How Can I
Fall Asleep without You. Mentor: Majda Tomc.
Besides the rich vocabulary, the most striking quality of Lara’s poem may be her
frankness in laying out the poem about her pain. She knows how to accentuate
it by introducing somewhat rougher words and phrases, rhetorical questions,
enumerations, varied punctuation. Frankness ... the two most beautiful lines
should be quoted in full: “What I always feared most … That you would die in
my arms, and I never even quiver .” The true pearl is the final stanza, which might
well be a poem in its own right – long as the poem is, not a single word is used
needlessly or injudiciously – and builds the father’s monument indeed.
How Can I Fall Asleep without You
How can I fall asleep without you?
To walk in your shoes in my dreams, to meet at the end of the pier.
Then be … Too close to the stars.
Wax in our wings.
Not long ago we flew through the window, freed from our shackles.
But I chose to hang from the tree, seeking lovelier dreams.
Can you imagine how lovely the world looks upside down?
How can I read?
You were the one to read books on hard nights.
Your breath past my ears like the spring breeze, a laugh in your eyes.
Yes, the laugh was still there, at the time.
Did you lose it? Out there, on your solitary paths?
When you gave it to someone. Forever.
While you yourself halted selflessly, you pathetic being.
I no longer know what to think of you.
There is a sweetness on your cheeks, a weight, modesty, firmness, defencelessness,
weakness, sadness.
What I always feared most … That you would die in my arms, and I
never even quiver.
And so, father, I walked in your shoes, and they were too large.
Stumbling over grass blades, sprawling among creatures and muddy umbrellas.
But I would rise again ... Because of ... Because they were yours.
Riddled with holes, clogged with weight, water, mould ... But they were yours.
They were ours …
Now I can proudly wear them alone.
Translated by Nada Grošelj