LEAVING THE HOUSE WE MADE LOVE IN Poem by Uroš Zupan

I need to write now that I'm still here. I see numb
greetings of rooms losing life. It seems like dying slowly,
as if the house were someone saying goodbye to his life.

His organs slowly lose their function. Gradually, they become
useless. Sometimes I try to reawaken life in them, restore their
initial glow - I reanimate the dying rooms by washing the dishes,

vacuuming the carpets, wiping the dust gathered on books.
Who would think that a poet, to calm himself, would do such things?
In the kitchen there is a clock showing five past two. It was you

who had set it, and her hands still point at that time. It isn't too fast,
it isn't too slow for things to change. Everything has come
to a standstill in her, and everything will stay in her. I don't know about others,

but I can tell you what I see captured in this exact time: your body,
when in the light of an approaching summer afternoon, in the fragrance
of balmy July air you stepped on your toes, dressed in a black mini-skirt,

and wanted to set the clock to the schedule of your life.
I have never wound it. I did not want it to upset my own,
our timelessness, which is still here, in autumn, in the only room

warm and alive, where I let a lie wash over me, promising some kind
of sweet continuance, and which in the afternoons for a few moments softly
escapes the agony, giving way to soothing drowsiness. I will have to leave

the house we made love in, the house in which I felt
the resonance of your steps, where I was bathed by the gentleness
of your voice. The tree outside has shed all its leaves in one night.

I will never be able to shed all my memories. The scratches on my back
have healed, but the sound of your laughter still echoes in my ears,
and the things you have given me, those my eyes still persistently touch.

There cannot be a big poem and total harmony. It is better
not to speak, but swim in silence when approaching total harmony.
Words are useless then. I'm going out now. Perhaps the speech

of November wind will disclose another secret to me, what has remained
unknown to me, or perhaps the figure of Cesare Pavese, whom I have lately followed
so persistently, will. Ljubljana, Turin, it makes no difference

if you are alone. My only life is poetry
and the more she wins the more I lose