Uroš Mozetič

We are that we are, and the in-between shall be in-between.
This is no religious wisdom. This is but a summary of my life,
As simple and predictable as it takes. In the shadow of Akkad, Thebes,
Memphis, Karkemish, Delphi, the Ganges, Jerusalem, Lhasa,
While I'm barbecuing steaks in the garden, raking molehills,
Throwing rotten tomatoes on the compost, hanging the washing on a line,
Elegantly moving about the kitchen or repairing the roof, and
Pondering the joy of losing balance only to be shattered on your forehead;
Or while I'm mowing the gray-green grass of your eyes, planting the
Seeds for you in the birdhouse, pruning the sweet-smelling slim necks of
Branches, mending the gutter, red like fire, for the hoary juice of rain,
Or scrubbing the sun-tannned floor of the veranda, knowing all the time that
I would deal with you more thoroughly than that Neruda spring does with
Its cherry blossoms, or the autumn with the leaves and bushes;
While I'm changing the bed linen and twisting the remains of your hair into a
Ball, or while, because the sky is full of stars, I simply wonder about
The truth of the zodiac.
What sinister design is woven into this routine!
You'll never know what's going on in the metaphysics of my household.
(This is all the bag and baggage of my world.)

Translated by the author

At the end of times,
At the prolongation of the shade of shades,
When death no longer is discussed
Without the pondering on life,
Will there be one to call himself a poet?
The expanded metaphor is therefore to be
Swallowed by the shifting sands of pain.
As you were coming up, I barely saw you:
You were walking midst the drops of rain.
You spoke like one
Lamenting for the death of fate.
If you had loved the sky
As much as I did love the rain,
Would our space still lack
The gender and the number running empty?
You are agitated by, that much I know,
The common garden, engraved on the four rows of stones.
It is being soaked in four waters.
(Like the glory of the fathers graven on the long garment,
Where the world will find its rest.)
At the end of times.

You shall not stroll through it
Until you've counted all the grains of sand,
And the hourglass has stopped in you.
You shall measure the depth of yourself
By the four waters.
You shall find a rest on the four stones.
And when you say:
Take this body and don't bring it back
Until I'm truly worthy of it,
I will bring the first bucket.
Night after night, three times running
You shall be sad because of losing
Sadness.
The ray of darkness will dry your throat.
You shall gather water for the second time.
(Once you've entered, you're out.
The door is the same, with a two-fold profile.
Like the sun-wind
In the white sails of the waters,
They show refusal to return to the
Dullness of the surface.)
It will pour for the third time,
And you shall sing:

Eros, Logos, Kairos, Agape.
Four riders of Love,
Drenched with sweat and full of dust.
I await my second
Conscious shock.
I reflect upon the difference between
Number four and number five.
Once started, there's no end to it.
There's only time at the end of times.

Translated by the author

Lošinj.
Veli and Mali.
The remains of the monastery walls are grazed
By echoes of solitude. There is no one here to
Translate time when you choose to substitute your body
For another, whiter than yours, with a sign of the Living.
At the far end of the quay I left you a dumb sign:
A school of tales, tossing in the net of your hair,
Living and asleep, with the smell of the tar of
Unnamable ships. Uvala Krivica. Ravenska. Sveti Ivan.
All's kodak----distant.
Sometimes it seems, because you are gone, that
The sea has not been created. That the shudder
Of the agaves within your eyes is not from
The mistral and my seagull-tongue.
And Him, whose all the edges I have blunted,
Yet still I bleed every time I snuggle in and out?
Like the very moment when a birth rolls away,
And we fail to be near.
Twice Lošinj.
If we are ever to leave it for the third time,
It will be of ashes, not of salt.

Translated by the author

Proposing to Love, Lust dances the tango.
Are the source and the mouth of a river
Indeed its beginning and end?
Ask me an easier question.
Should people who have never known
Love insist it's nowhere to be found?
People who wake in a sweat because
They have failed to observe the duple time?
Arrida. Mordida. Salida.
An easier one.
Are you a lover crossing a bridge
And facing the source while
She's turning to you?
Or are you one of those who think
That heart has every right to reason on its own?
(The tragedy of mankind is in every
Man's preoccupation with his own.)
Love shows no mercy.
It is soothed by the nostalgia for
Some lovely common habits. It will find
Itself inflamed around the one who leads.
Love, standing on a single pair of legs.

Translated by the author