Veronika Dintinjana

Twenty years changes how you measure time,
not just the tempo.
Some desires remain —
to play the piano, to possess the key to unearthly
beauty and peace, from a distance no one can hear
the hard work, untold hours
fraught with imperfection.
Only love offers such devotion:
to accept transience in the search for readiness,
to open up, your keys to the sky,
when the creator plays his music.

Translated from Slovene by the author, Laura Solomon,
Ciaran O’Driscoll and Rose Aasen Rojas.

Rain, cold and heat have corroded
the low-grade marble; they’re like
the crest of a wave, for an instant
take form
and already
                       dissolve into foam.

They smile.
Perhaps they know they are disappearing.

Translated from Slovene by the author, Laura Solomon,
Ciaran O’Driscoll and Rose Aasen Rojas.

I whisper, Herr, es ist Zeit.

The maple answers with a susurrus, gravel crunches under foot.
The night, partly cloudy; in the west remains of the sunset,
the glow of exhaust fumes, mist,
snorting in the stables, the horse in the enclosure steps sideways,
farts, which echoes in the night,
the hotel is half empty, the guests asleep,
the horses sleep standing up. Some are awake,
I whisper so they are not frightened by unknown footsteps,
time has stopped, the hours have amalgamated into night
with no moon, lamps, some light
comes from the hotel, not enough, the gaze has to pierce the dark,
the eye adjusts, the body listens. Among shadows
the white horses, brightest bodies apart from the stars.
You can feel the chill, the smell of horse dung,
the autumn after summer. Ivy feeds on the maple,
pines make way for oak, the oak ousts the pine
life devours life, it is as it should be:

to understand the sequence of passages,
your place in it, transcends the human part.

The heart’s orientation is all we possess.

The world takes shape in the body’s orifices,
under the roof of my eyelids I shelter doorkeepers of unsuspected minutes.

A white horse in the enclosure turns to me,leaning against the trunk of the chestnut tree I remain
like this without end. The cloud above us
scatters spores of tranquility. Not even solitude
seems inevitable, sadness falls off, the passage is open,
something more enduring than words runs through it.

 Translated from Slovene by the author, Laura Solomon,
Ciaran O’Driscoll and Rose Aasen Rojas.

grow into the sky
until you become a tree

full of selected rain and crumbled soil

what can the wind do
when you dress up in blossoms?

singularity is your scepter

neither silver nor gold
have given their body
for a table, a bed

and when birds in your crown fall asleep
you stir no more

silence replaces the alphabet of signs

77 77
Veronika Dintinjana

Translated from Slovene by the author, Laura Solomon,
Ciaran O’Driscoll and Rose Aasen Rojas.