It is said that people quietly
endeavor to die, because everything organic
strives to become inorganic,
and all movement strives towards
no longer being movement.
Things fall apart because they wish
to be left alone.
Sad people surrender,
as medieval towns surrender.
After drawn out sieges. Arduously.
Under their own terms.
They can’t handle the burden. Guilt and gloom
are justly shared
by everybody present.
To decline doesn’t help,
To be heartless is useful,
even if psychoanalysts claim,
that to renounce desire is to die beforehand.
I find it hard to face mirrors. They force me to
confront and mercilessly hate my face.
This separates me from beautiful people,
who can afford malice and fury, without
losing anything; loved and insured in advance.
There are truthful people, who can manage clarity,
without constantly reminding themselves,
that no untrue thing has ever been beautiful.
They don’t avoid their sadness and when confronting
their failures, they say with a certain calm:
I am aware that I have been abandoned. You are
outside my reach. There is no sense in
insistence. Nobody loves when it is
required.
But these people have learned things
I am not able to. We are separated
by a weakness, disguised as a sense of honor,
which converts everything, by touching, into theory.
And when it gets truly unbearable, I can only,
in an exaggerated squeamish manner, wait for
rain that would align the weather with my mood.
There is a certain grace in bailing yourself out
with art. Grace, in which you speak,
liberated from a single-point of view’s constraint,
that prevents speech and points out the ineptitude,
that you never really avoid,
unfit to survive the exposure
required by being human.
Grace and affection demand strain
and it’s true – for me, nothing is ever easy.
It is irrelevant,
said someone that I know.
Your poems are irrelevant.
Art needs other things.
Art doesn’t need anything.
I would like to match.
Prevedel Jasmin B. Frelih
Govori se, da si ljudje po tihem
prizadevamo za smrt, ker vse organsko
teži k temu, da bi spet postalo anorgansko
in vsako gibanje teži k temu,
da ne bi bilo več gibanje.
Stvari razpadejo, ker si želijo,
da bi se jih pustilo pri miru.
Žalostni ljudje se predajajo,
kot se predaja srednjeveška mesta.
Po dolgih obleganjih. Stežka.
Samo pod lastnimi pogoji.
Ne zdržijo bremena. Krivda in žalost
se pravično razdelita
med vse, ki so zraven.
Da odklanjaš, ne pomaga,
če si brez srca, je koristno,
čeprav psihoanalitiki pravijo, da vnaprej umre,
kdor se odreče želji. Težko se srečujem
v ogledalih, ki me silijo v soočenje
in neusmiljeno sovraštvo do svojega obraza.
To me loči od lepih ljudi, ki si lahko privoščijo
objestnost in togoto, ne da bi s tem kaj
izgubili; zavarovani in ljubljeni vnaprej.
So resnicoljubni ljudje, ki zmorejo jasnost,
ne da bi se nenehno opominjali,
da še nobena neresnična reč ni bila lepa.
Ne izogibajo se svoji žalosti in v soočenjih
s svojimi porazi z določeno mirnostjo rečejo:
Zavedam se, da sem bil zapuščen. Zunaj
mojega dosega si. Nobenega smisla ni v
prepričevanju. Nihče ne ljubi, kadar se od njega zahteva.
Toda ti ljudje so se naučili stvari,
ki jih ne zmorem. Od njih me ločuje
nemoč, zakrinkana v občutek za čast,
ki vse, česar se dotakne, predela v teorijo.
In kadar zares postane neznosno, je vse, kar lahko,
da v pretirano rahločutni maniri čakam na
dež, ki bi uskladil vreme z mojim razpoloženjem.
Določena milost je v tem, da se rešiš
v umetnost. Milost, v kateri govoriš
razrešen prisile enega samega pogleda,
ki onemogoča govor in opozarja na nesposobnost,
ki se ji nikdar zares ne izogneš,
nepripravljen preživeti izpostavljanje,
ki ga zahteva to, da si človek.
Milina in naklonjenost terjata napor
in res je, da zame ni nič nikdar zlahka.
Nepomembno je,
je rekel nekdo, ki ga poznam.
Tvoje pesmi so nepomembne.
Umetnost potrebuje druge stvari.
Umetnost ne potrebuje ničesar.
V tem bi ji bila rada podobna.
