Slovenian Literator

Grafenauer Niko:
Widow

A widow is the silent shadow of a dead man

behind a faraway window. Outside night meshes.

Damp scenes materialize and fade upon the walls.

Like a ram, the wind butts the door.

She is alone among cloudy impulses. The wood in the

room groans.

Her movements settle like pleats of air.

Twilight congeals in her softness.

Beneath her fingers a cigarette dies crackling like a

louse.

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.