Slovenian Literator

Grafenauer Niko:
I Am

Noon at mid-summer is cruel as clear consciousness.

Whatever escapes numbness only in form is cut for prey,

Snakes twirl upward like wisps of smoke.

It is growing dark, autumn is distant and is drawing near.

With the laws of the dead I established freedom

in order to subdue it and ascertain everything.

Winds girdle me, it’s a long climb.

The pain that I am enters into me like a knife.

Behind me full of evil composure lurks silence.

The fall is long like an outcry that dies in the distance.

Lost in silence I seek strength for a new venture,

but everything seems to rot in the grip of darkness.

Translated by Jože Lazar

Archived by Thezaurus on 08/19/01 | permalink |

Niko Grafenauer

(1940 - ) A poet, essayist, translator, and editor. He graduated in comparative literature from the University of Ljubljana. Formerly a free-lance writer, and an editor at the major publishing house, Grafenauer is currently the director of a prominent intellectual magazine, The New Review and its affiliated publications. He published seven books of poetry including The Solitude (Samota, 1994), nine books of poems for children, and five books of criticism. A winner of the Prešeren Prize for lifetime achievement, Grafenauer's books are translated into Serbo-Croatian and Macedonian. His poetry, inspired by Mallarme, Hölderlin and Celan whose work Grafenauer beautifully translated, is formal yet powerfully meditative.