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
...
she with tin legs
hourglass in mouth aquarium in her head
he with all the towns' staircases on his back
under his arm a heart that can be wound up or stopped
...
under a blossoming cherry tree he sings about spring
holds the music upside down in angelic hands
the song is seraphically sad a devilishly funny
women and children watch him without malice
...
the sea is leafing through wave after wave
a ripple of sound over stones then foam and nothing
a memory heaping moisture and scent on the shore
...
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.)
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