Andrej Hočevar

1
I step in my place like a famished wolf,
in order to sleep, not for the sake of wakefulness.
I will once return here,
weary of slicing waves into pieces so tiny
you could believe them all to grow their own single hair,
further deepening the difference between night and day.
That I will return does not mean
I was here before.
I have never been, where I once was:
in this room, in any room,
on the edge where the sky melts into a drop of blood,
in which the buzzing of ideas is forever stilled,
in the middle of a field where animals cross
with serene and concordant steps.
I turn the page, I turn my head,
just catching the last ideas departing,
not in nights’ litanies nor in pools of silence,
agitation kept aside for some other gemination.
No idea can be caught by bare hands,
not even the tiniest one, imprinted in a glance,
fleeting as the years and tender as death:
left behind us is something slow.

2
A peaceful branch, in the light of a late afternoon,
carries summer in its unripe fruit:
the sight of it, as it slowly rocks back and forth,
carries hope.
At present this must be necessary
in order to keep the ringing from suddenly tumbling into the grass
(we think we think grass,
being rarely conscious of loving something
that puts us before a new riddle).
No difficulty appears: everything flooded before
flashes past the ears first,
then disappears that
which was never missed,
but could have been, where words exist
for something never thought of.
And were it missed, even the feeling of luck would equal
the sureness of a step mounting a new stair --
it is too late:
memory is forever sizzling
like blisters on scorched skin.

3
I never give in, even when I know there exist
more spaces than known to me,
where fear would fill up most of what is otherwise hidden
even under the most fragile shell.
Light falls upon a ripe wall
like scent through hair:
hitting, at the end, something
expanding over the unthinkable:
words strung on a string are still unreadable.
And anyhow -- who would I reveal my location to if I could?
Rocks can be scratched out
with teeth and gentle arguing
and lips can seal the openings
through which time escapes:
and thus I deceive myself that I am here.

4
Not many things rest
like villages on mountain tops:
they give in from weariness
to divine breath,
leaving behind
the freedom of insanity.

Translated by Ana Petkovšek.

Everything I look at starts to move;
where is the assurance that I won’t one day
chase myself out of bed,
just as each poem keeps expelling from itself
a poem?
Clarity is no solution: at most a sign
of absence or to the last page deserted
appurtenance.
Everything I look at starts to move
in hesitation of deep fear.
The first birth is shyly repressed,
not to mention the second,
and sleeping in the same bed is the sequence
of images with a single result:
immobility
in bullet-sifted dreams of mutual
destruction of experience and meaning.
Everything is opening,
buds like wounds, wounds like
doors, doors like moist lids at the bottom of a lake,
debts encrypted inside hourglasses.

Translated by Ana Petkovšek.

It all seems like the first signs of a storm
do not suffice when walking on invisible edges;
on the one side surrender, leaning on
warm air, rising higher and higher,
the insufficence of vigilance on the other,
as fragrant as cars at night.
But this in truth contains no scent and this
poem is about something different,
how I would like, most of all, to turn and let
my legs be burnt by fire from two sides,
and a new night take flight with smoke
for whoever will be able to accept it
as a companion part of the way, not more,
for reminiscence insists on incompleteness --
next icy wallnuts substitute eyes
safely stored in my words,
thus, effortless, letters sometimes unlock abysses.
But all that will be left behind
will have to be wiped of like footsteps in dust.
If I were a dog I would lick the syrupy puddles
sweeter with every frost.

Translated by Ana Petkovšek.