Kovič Kajetan:
Elderberry Hours
This is the old elderberry behind the house. These,
the elderberry hours.
The terrifyingly green tightness of the leaves.
The blackish tint of the berries.
The bitter elderberry time before the storm.
Below the wall, the blossoms of the nettle.
The grass unmown.
Behind the wall, a room.
The stale smell of bachelor uncles.
The hollow elderberry stalk of Sunday.
The after-dinner quiet.
The reddish stems of the berries.
Their flat, insipid taste
in elderberry sleep.
Sweet spittle ripens
in the sluggish mouth of boys
leaning on the elderberry flanks of houses.
Kajetan Kovič
(1931 - ) A poet, writer and translator. He graduated in comparative literature at the University of Ljubljana. For many years Kovič worked as a journalist and editor; now as a freelance writer. In 1978 he won the Prešeren Prize for lifetime achievement. Kovič is the author of widely read fiction for adolescents and poetry for children. In addition, he has published four novels. Kovič, an excellent translator of Eluard, Rilke, Trakl and other twentieth century poets, writes with a professed allegiance to strict form and neo-Romantic imagination. His poems of loss, the melancholy passing of time, and major historical disruptions as they are revealed in everyday details, produced some of the most popular as well as highly accomplished poems. His work is translated into a number of European languages.By the same author
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