Essay on Slovenian poetry
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Gregor Podlogar
Translated by Laura Solomon and the author
13:33
Laura Solomon is going to Paris. Hello Paris.
What about Southampton? What about all the unread
newspapers, reviews, books, notes? The notebook is silent.
Don’t forget the emails. I’m frightened, as if someone
had stepped on my feelings. Enough of the emotional weather.
This poem doesn’t mention our national barn either, although
there is one at the end of Šiška, on the left,
on the other side of the street.
Already a week I’ve been carrying a collection
of poems by Tom Raworth, a letter from Paul Killebrew
and the light of autumn streets.
And summer’s melancholy has ended,
the truce has ended.
If I say
improvisation,
I think of friendship.
The plan accepted, the destinations conquered.
… so to fix
bitter melancholy
neon shine
shifty regards
and I am AGAIN asking,
if they know,
how cold and dirty it is.
And neither did we succeed
in escaping our own regard
of the seasons’ turn.
This relation to tea is insanely pleasant,
next to this sound another sound.
And it’s different
from the feeling,
when you walk around the city,
to watch
moving pictures,
carefully rummaging the interior,
and sometimes you’re only spinning faster the reel.
And the second line is silence
because today we already know,
sometimes it’s better to be silent.
Ligeti didn’t lecture,
Cage didn’t play.
Africa is roaring,
slums at the courtyard of history.
This is not a political poem.
Two thousand stops
and not any bases.
February pushes on the windows.
Now you are just, you say to yourself.
You boil the water for tea,
turn off the cell phone,
open the book.
Something is scratching in the attic.
The afternoon on its knees.
I am in Šiška.
American poets
are still rallying to Šiška,
usually at the beginning of summer.
This poem won’t say
anything new.
This poem is not a secret.
This poem is taking meaning
from this poem.
It will repeat in your head.
Until the end, when you will have ended
in any one of these hotel rooms.
Mute and drunk as John Wayne.
