Debeljak Aleš:
Accross The River, To The East
Iz was a young buck, that rushed across the clearing. A long-ago
shot on the bridge in the middle of the town, which, dying away, echoes in your brain.
But it doesn’t matter. Water drips over the weir. The master of passages in a massive
villa above the confluence of rivers rolls over in restless sleep. The echo
of his every step rings emptily. The band in the park falls silent. And you, who walked
through camps and long Russian winters, slide silently past guards
who are looking the other way. You slip quickly across the courtyard
floored with gray bones. Long ago you crossed the ultimate
frontier. You learned the world’s basic rules. He survives who
knows how to accept the painful gift. Don’t look at the patterns on the ceiling.
Strike the way most only dream; so that the skull cracks like vanilla
wafers. Strike. So that, on the glistering razor’s edge, angels will moan and the passion
in youthful veins will stop dead. Let our people recognize themselves in their open
wounds, if there’s no other way, let the last citadel finally fall.
Aleš Debeljak
(1961 - ) A poet, essayist, translator and prominent literary cartographer. Debeljak graduated in comparative literature from the University of Ljubljana and received his Ph.D. in Social Thought from Syracuse University, New York. He is a former Fulbright fellow at the University of California-Berkeley and a fellow of Budapest Institute of Advanced Study. Debeljak published five books of essays and five books of poems, including Anxious Moments (White Pine Press, 1994; originally Minute strahu, 1990). A translator of selected poems by John Ashbery, he won the Prešeren Foundation Prize / Slovenian National Book Award and Miriam Lindberg Israel Poetry for Peace Prize-Tel Aviv. His books have appeared in Croatian, Polish, Hungarian, Czech, German, and Italian translation. Debeljak has edited Serbian, Croatian, and Slovenian sections for Shifting Borders: East European Poetry in the Eighties (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1993) and edited Prisoners of Freedom: Contemporary Slovenian Poetry (Pedernal Press, 1993).Author's web page
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