Half a year after your death
I called home,
no one answered the phone and
suddenly I was surprised by your voice
on the answering machine.
As if the cactuses from the window shelf
had circled my bed in the morning.
As you were talking from the cube
of pink jelly
your voice
was both familiar and strange,
unusually determined like the voice
of a thirty-year-old who is never
at home and needs an answering machine
because he just came from handball,
and is hurrying to a shooting exercise.
Just as all shooters on the way
to the range, he knows that he has to stare
through the window of the bus
at the same spot continuously,
the moon on the afternoon sky,
so in front of the target
his heart begins to beat with the black circles
until he joins them with his pulse on a dot
and pulls the trigger.
The familiar voice
of a thirty-year-old who is now on
a honeymoon to Venice with the tape of Glen Miller
in the car. A women’s hat with a wide brim.
His light summer trousers – Gatsby’s style -
slip over his knees when he jumps over
two stairs at a time.
Stinky canals, damp walls,
pigeons, he says to her, pigeons everywhere,
at the same time as his cigarette, he leisurely
lights the smiles on negatives.
I pass by this tall slender man
in a light summer shirt who does not recognize me,
I do not exist.
I am thinking – when we erase the tape
and your voice in my head
becomes blurred I will be
a bit more porous,
my vanishing
will begin to prepare.
Translated by Bridgette Bates and the author
Pol leta po tvoji smrti
sem poklicala domov,
nihče ni dvignil slušalke in
nenadoma me je na tajnici presenetil
tvoj glas.
Kot bi kaktusi z okenske police
zjutraj obkrožili mojo posteljo.
Kot da se oglašaš iz kocke
rožnatega želeja.
Tvoj glas
je bil znan in hkrati tuj,
neobičajno odločen kot glas
tridesetletnika, ki ni nikoli
doma in potrebuje tajnico,
ker je pravkar prišel z rokometa
in se mu mudi na strelske vaje.
Kot vsi strelci ve, da mora na poti
v strelišče zreti skozi okno
avtobusa v vedno isto točko,
luno na popoldanskem nebu,
da mu potem pred tarčo
srce začne biti s črnimi krogi,
dokler jih z utripom ne sklene v piko
in pritisne na sprožilec.
Znan glas
tridesetletnika, ki je pravkar na poročnem
potovanju v Benetke s kaseto Glena Millerja
v avtu. Ženski klobuk s širokimi krajci.
Lahke poletne hlače – Gatsbyjev stil –
zdrsnejo preko kolen, ko preskakuje
po dve stopnici čez mostove.
Smrdljivi kanali, vlažni zidovi,
golobi, ji reče, povsod golobi,
hkrati z vžigalnikom lahkotno
prižiga nasmeške na negative.
Grem mimo tega visokega vitkega moškega
v svetli poletni srajci, ki me ne prepozna,
ni me še.
Pomislim – ko bomo presneli tajnico
in bo tvoj glas v moji glavi
postajal zabrisan, bom ostala
nekoliko bolj porozna,
začelo se bo pripravljati
moje izginjanje.
