Milan Jesih

On the water glides
a wooden duck.
The summer fades.
From a grandchild, how
does a grandma sprout?
Just wait a while.

A slip of a verse
is crossing the field,
leaving a still
track in the grass.
Will anyone follow it here, so far,
with what hope?

In the sky, the wrap
of a silver gull –
who can pluck it down?

A milky morning
spills
over spilt
morning milk.

With each breath, autumn deepens by a stitch.
It deepens into void and the unknown:
the sunset copper frizzles the sun’s disc,
you stare in childlike wonder, a man grown

– and all that ever was, in living hush,
comes flooding back as soon as eyes have closed:
no moment ever passes in its rush:
the tender yieldings, the betrayals low,

all go on in your heart, unmarred, unspoilt,
and have not through the years unlearnt to be –
your hands, created for the goodly toil,
rest clasped behind your ass, reflectively,

while through the reamers courses blood and time.
Over the fields descends a lonesome haze.
The manes of Mustangs, halted in the sky,
burst, one dry instant more, into a blaze.

The aged dog is gone. Gone is the brute
who used to roll before the fireplace,
beg standing on his hind legs, drip his drool
and pant and send the guests in gales

of laughter, imitating whining curs;
            the master is no more,

who always would address him as milord
– and, they said, introduce him as an earl –,

the house has been devoured by arcades,
by vaults and porticoes, all toppled down,
the line is finished and the order changed,
the oak is brought to rot, the grapevine dried,

all’s past. Indeed, some winter’s night
the traveller may freeze in his mid-stride
as if he heard a panting far and close,
but when he listens, only falling snow.

A second-hand bookshop: last night I leafed
through reproductions of some painters’ works:
in an Impressionist paysage emerged
a soldier – tiny, only just perceived

in his blue jacket and his too-white pants,
a kind of knickers – from the dusky shades
which gather when the day begins to fade
and distance is transformed into a blank

corroding both the figure and head-gear
with all the surety of an eve drawn near,
he stood there, I remember, as is meet
for dashing soldiers, stood and did not kneel

– the heaven’s vault above glowed murkily
in the last mystery, and grew coal-dark –.
It was a soldier in parading garb,
already buried to the very knee.