Zajc Dane:
Great Black Bull
The great black bull bellows in the morning.
Great black bull, who are you calling?
The pastures are empty.
The mountains are empty.
The gorges are empty.
Empty like the echo of your call.
The great black bull bellows in the morning.
As if spraying dark black blood
over the crowns of dark pines.
As if the bull’s bleeding eye
had spilled open that morning
over eastern forests.
Great black bull, who are you calling?
Do you take pleasure in hearing
how your hollow scream
returns as an echo?
Great black bull, bloodless is the morning.
Your voice falls into gorges
like a tattered swarm
of black ravens.
No one hears your solitude.
You quench no one’s thirst
with your black and bloodied voice.
Be silent, great black bull.
The great black bull bellows in the morning.
The eastern sun sharpens
its glistening hatchet.
Dane Zajc
(1929-2005) A poet, essayist, and playwright who, until his retirement, worked as a librarian in Ljubljana. Considered the doyen of postwar poets, he was active in the foundation of numerous literary magazines, including Review 57 (Revija 57), Problems (Problemi) and Perspectives (Perspektive), which he also edited. His lyrical poems displayed dark and depressing atmospheres, and were suffused with stark existentialist images which helped undermine the then-obligatory aesthetics of socialist realism. In the 1960s, with the advent of neoavant-garde writing, Zajc's poems won renewed appreciation and became part of the national canon. Zajc also writes for children (poems, prose and plays). He is best known, however, for his poetic plays, such as Children of the River (Otroka reke). A former Fulbright fellow at Columbia University in New York , he has seen the publication of his collected works in five volumes in 1990. Zajc received the Prešeren Prize for lifetime achievement in 1981.By the same author
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