Ivan Dobnik - Vilenica

Flight dynamics
To Gino Lorio, in memory
He was accompanied by a ferocious determination
from his room to the gym
the hundred metres covered in five minutes,
with a tension of a racing engine
all the strength of his spastic body
in rebellion against the strength of the gravity.
Pierluigi Cappello · 73
Saint Augustine used to say that perfection
is the flesh that turns into spirit, the spirit that turns into flesh
but it isn’t true: every morning the crutch ferrules
slide metre by metre to overcome a hundred of them
every morning the spirit is cut off from that body,
from the shuffling soles and tight knuckles,
white on the handgrips,
every morning a neck of taut tendons and loosened reins
detaches itself from the combatant’s back
a cry enclosed in its depth,
perfect in its separatedness.
And in this I see a beauty of knocked-down crests
and in the word to go the word fulfilment
and I am sure that he dreams about kisses full of zephyr
while his will conquers the days bite by bite,
slap after slap so that the evening might come
slap after slap, keel in full storm.
What is needed is a summer at its peak and a calm father,
a god who does not sit in his throne among the defeated
but now I can imagine him in all his beauty
as a child having his first pushes on the pedals,
manage it, there we go, hold it this way – now he’ll make it
united are the earth and the sky of the summer
he won’t skid any more, he is winning, is balancing,
he flies away.
July 2003
Translated by Martina Ožbot and Oliver Currie