Veno Taufer

Veno Taufer Poems

Veno Taufer Biography

Veno Taufer, born in 1933 in Ljubljana, is a poet, playwright, essayist, translator with M. A. in comparative literature from the University of Ljubljana. Editor of the literary magazine Review 57 (Revija 57) until it was banned in 1959, Taufer was also a manager of the experimental theatre group Oder 57. For many years he worked as a journalist (BBC-London, Ljubljana) before founding and directing the International Literary Festival Vilenica in the early 80’s which was then in the communist governed Slovenia understood as an important part of the engagement for the democratization as well as in the case of Taufer’s Committee for Freedom of Speech and Writing, the first “unofficial” public body of Civil society, he in 1985 initiated in Slovene Writers’ Association.)

The Best Poem Of Veno Taufer

SARAJEVO

two thousand years in the library books maps
in flames the wind carries leaves away from memory
blood sticks letters and pages in stiff fingers

pens tremble as the sound of the spheres reaches the listening
who have only commentaries to resist death
the age pursuing the shot to the heart struck by the echo in sarajevo

sinks with one of those ships in that list in the poem
the elements crumble water disperses into noxious vapours
flames petrify to ash and cold

stone rots to dust swallowed by mud in the depths
the disgusting lips of cracks suck the shredded air
where trees grew the wailing is degraded to drooling

the age pursuing the shot to the heart struck by the echo in sarajevo
sinks with one of those ships in that list in the poem
surviving scribes blinded by the seasons' explosion

scrabble for shards of letters and scraps of parchment
to write down in brief what the ancients already
repeated in the terrible mystery of their fragments

the word couples with mortal flesh to survive
the age pursuing the shot to the heart struck by the echo in sarajevo
sinks with one of those ships in that list in the poem


November 1993

Translated by Michael Scammell & author

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