Zbornik Mednarodnega literarnega srečanja Vilenica 2003 - Ljudmila

Conversation with the wanderer
What I want, he says, perhaps
I wanted to be a bird, a swallow
I saw, there, high in the mountains,
and wanted to stay there myself
in the shadow of the house by the river
where he nested, from where he flew up.
I remember the return,
the warm twilight on the terrace,
how I sat there, following the meanders
of the river into the fields, the hazy lines
of the mountains up into the distance,
the flight of a swallow -
until he disappeared.
I was tired and went up again in thought
into the mountains, higher and higher,
to that lonely, lucid world of rock,
sat there again in the wind and gazed
into the depths.
Perhaps, he says, I want something
I can look at for ever, that house
down there, the nest I have myself deserted,
and the meanders of the river, the lines
of the mountains, laid still at last,
as it was there, the moment I
disappeared from view, something
that exists beyond myself.
206
I cavalli di Leonardo
All those sketches he left behind -
endless series of repetitions: bunches of muscles, sinews,
knuckles, joints, the entire machinery
of driving-belts and levers with which
a horse moves,
and out of thousands of hair-thin little lines, the skin
almost invisibly gently disappearing into the paper
of ears and eyelids, nostrils,
skin of the soul -
he must have wanted to find out how a horse
is made and have realized
it can't be done,
how the secret of a horse grew and grew
beneath his pencil.
Made the most splendid designs, studied them,
discarded them
What is happiness?
Because happiness is a memory
it exists because at the same time
the reverse is also true
I mean this: because happiness
reminds us of happiness it pursues
us and therefore we flee from it
and vice versa, I mean this: that we
look for happiness because it
hides in our memories and
vice versa, I mean this: happiness
must exist somewhere at some time because
we remember it and it reminds us.
207
Translated from the Dutch by James Brockway