Slovenian Literator

Kovič Kajetan:
Fruits Of The Summer

You went through the cold trees

you invisible you to-be,

whipped by the rain

and icy winter

crazy for this life

and not a hope in the world

you carried your sweet bodies

that had been thrown into other embraces

out of a dark foreign delusion

pure again over and over

over to our side of the world

frail and shy you went

through flowering

relentlessly herded

toward your perilous fate

unsure till the end

and then with a shout you smashed

the happy gate

and spilled over the earth

white white white

fruits of the summer

Translated by The Author

Archived by Thezaurus on 09/06/01 | permalink |

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.