HÖLDERLIN TOWER Poem by Uroš Zupan

34 Chengdujska St., flat no. five,
first floor, three flights up,
straight on and you walk into
a big brass plate, the biggest in all Fužine if not
in all Ljubljana - worthy of a poet. It was put onto
the door by my father. It says ZUPAN on it.
This is my Hölderlin tower.
It wasn't given to me by a carpenter,
for whom, by way of thanks, I should conjure up gods,
rather, it was rented out to me by Ljubljana City-Centre
Council, but the intention was exactly the same.
This is where I now pass most of my time. I lie about, sleep,
wait for Nataša, fiddle with the remote control and
wait for football to come up on some channel.
Marjan Rožanc would say: mass of the twentieth century.
I move about the stove. Make risotto, pasta, soups.
Bake miracles in the oven. Season salads.

Rocket salad is a must. I dip bread into olive
oil. Eat the Mediterranean. When Nataša comes
home, she eats the Mediterranean too. But the thing I like
most is to be a stow-away on a ship
bound for childhood.Then I write it all down.
Some read it and put it aside with disgust.
Others read it and fall in love with what they've read.
These I prefer. There's no need for me to go anywhere.
I rotate an invisible globe, sticking in
the pennants of past and future expeditions.
In the evenings I lock the mouths of books to stop
them from quarelling. Outside flows the River Ljubljanica, thinking
itself to be the Neckar. But the only river to be the Neckar is
the River Trboveljšèica. I walk along the Ljubljanica. I go
rollerskating. Every time less cautiously. I have already
begun jumping the curbs. So far
with no consequences. With all due respect
to greatness, instead of babbling away
ceaselessly:'Palaksh, Palaksh', I shout on the pitch
at the top of my voice: 'Pass the ball,
don't play selfish. Defend.' People call me on the telephone,
rousing me from my poetic trance, asking:
'Mr Zupan, have you possibly read
my poems? What do you make of them?' I no longer know
how to talk myself out of it. I would like to stop
this heavy work. I don't feel at home
in a field of lost souls. Nobody ever comes
to visit. The poetic energies of this place
could make people overly happy and that
frightens them. God knows what my
neighbours suspect me of.
Money laundering. Arms trafficking. White
slave-trading. Selling dreams. Haggling with
words that can heal the worst of wounds.
My photograph is published in newspapers.
The other day I spoke, in carefully chosen words,
in well weighed and elaborate sentences, on the main
news of a private TV station. And once again
people thought: 'This guy, this guy must be rich.'
I don't watch myself on television. The camera makes me too fat.
I used to yearn for the attention of the gloss
and glitter. I longed for an unknown beauty
to tug at my sleeve and say: 'I've been
searching for you for ages, you are even more handsome
than in the photographs, is it really you?'
Today I enjoy living undercover. Reading
theological treatises in conjunction with sports
pages. Half an hour of Grace and Gravity
followed by half an hour of World Soccer.
The order is not important and the effects
are already surprisingly visible.