Slovenian Literator

Šalamun Tomaž:
Lacquer

Destiny rolls over me. Sometimes like an egg.

Sometimes

with its paws, slamming me into the slope. I shout. I

take

my stand. I pledge all my juices. I shouldn’t

do this. Destiny can snuff me out, I feel it now.

If destiny doesn’t blow on our souls, we freeze

instantly. I spent days and days afraid

the sun wouldn’t rise. That this was my last day.

I felt light sliding from my hands, and if I didn’t

have enough quarters in my pocket, and Metka’s voice

were not sweet enough and kind and solid and

real, my soul would escape from my body, as one day

it will. With death you have to be kind.

Home is where we’re from. Everything in a moist

dumpling.

We live only for a flash. Until the lacquer dries.

Translated by The author and Chris Merrill

Archived by Thezaurus on 08/24/01 | permalink |

Tomaž Šalamun

(1941 - ) A poet, and since 1996, a Slovenian cultural attache in New York. He graduated in art history from the University of Ljubljana and worked as a free-lance writer in Ljubljana. Salamun, who was in 1973 honored by the Preseren Foundation Prize/National Book Award was in the 1960's the leading figure of Slovenian poetical avant-garde. He has published extensively since his first two books in samizdat (Poker; The Purpose of the Cloak) appeared in 1966 and 1968, respectively. His work has been included in numerous anthologies, including Child of Europe (Penguin 1991) and East European Poetry (Ardis, 1983, 1985). A former fellow of the Iowa International Writing Program and a Fulbright fellow at Columbia University in New York, Salamun was also in residency at the art colonies of Yaddo and MacDowell. His recent books in English translation include The Selected Poems (Ecco Press 1988; edited by Charles Simic) and The Four Questions of Melancholy (White Pine Press, 1997; edited by Christopher Merrill).