Gašper Bivšek

As upon the sky
a thousand suns would shine,
all shadows falling
into one. Narrow, black.
1.
He wears no chequered shirt,
no pants of flax and no black
boots, no straps of skin,
no muscles wreathing
up the bones; no bones.
No serpents bursting
patterns from the heart. No heart.
And still his traces show,
without footsteps, through soft snow,
through green grass and blood soaked soil
with sawdust littered.
They show through moss, through stubble
and through stone and through frontage
and through beasts
and through me...not through vine.

2.
She wears no priestly robes,
and has no wooden altar, no jewels,
no plumage in her hair;
no hair. She brings no treasures and
no Jordan´s water, no willows`
incense, no stench spreads
from her lungs. She has no lungs.
And still her spirits graze
through skeletons of fields,
upon spring water
on those hellish days when all evaporates.
They graze through moss, through stubble
and through stone and through frontage
and through beasts
and through me... not through vine.

3.
Perun-perun perunika,
you see man-woman, mother,
coming from the woods.
You see his flocks,
you see her herds...
With a sound of three throats
I send my voices and my limbs,
myself entire, to salute him.
And I watch her through the mist,
from the stuffy room of liquor,
how she drips with drops of absinthe,
how from the sea the drops do frown,
how in the sea the drops then drown

4.
Perun-perun Perunika descends
from flocks, over whose weary
lids most precious goods are layed.
Nibbled tree stumps sprouting roots,
his concrete wings
caress the greenery of woods;
and in his trail
carpets of death
for scouts with cancer weave.
In the eyes his nights hold
black sky and black birds:
ravens, thrushes, magpies, crows;
crammed with gluttons,
pecking at the crumbs.

5.
Perun-perun Perunika stomps
from the herds, whose
saddles under linden trees were buried.
Banners flapping in the wind,
disfigured hooves of hers
gnaw narrow riverbeds;
in front of her collapsing
endless chasms
for the aprons of modest ones.
In the eyes her nights hold
bright caves and white beasts;
sheep, horses, bulls and goats;
crammed with headsmen
gulping clyster.

6.
In the armoured lies the vine,
there is stairway leading to it,
and all that was and all that is,
caught in the fragments of these stairs;
in sand which bore the concrete.
I am rounding in the sand;
its tongue licking my edges;
I earth among the molehills,
I fossilize among the roots.
Blooming I drip sooth...
that which remains
only an orange-dot on bark
and smoke, smoke, smoke.

Translated by Matic Vrečko.