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SEVEN URBAN TONGUES
Peter Semolic
Photo by Tihomir Pinter
Peter Semolic, born in Ljubljana in 1967, is the leading voice of the younger generation of Slovenian poets. Although his poetry has its roots in the Slovenian poetic tradition, he initiated a new trend named The New Simplicity by Slovenian literary critics, which exercised a strong influence on other Slovenain poets. His seemingly transparent poems often contain innocent images that quickly open up into a whirl of strong emotions and profound meaning. Semolic is the author of eight books of poetry, the most recent being Meja (Border, 2002), and Barjanski ognji (2004). He has received many prizes for his work, including the two most eminent awards in Slovenia, Jenko's Poetry Prize, the Preseren Prize (the National Award for Literature and the Arts) and the Vilenica Crystal Award. His poetry has been translated into a dozen European languages.
Reading Octavio Paz
Tonight I am sailing down all my rivers, borne by the stream of words, I sail as I speak, I speak as I sail...
...rivers, glittering like a child's laughter, the staccato of rapids, the fast chutes over cascades, rapturous drops down waterfalls, beads of water, in each the sun, and finally the foam, bubbles of air engulfing me like a great Jacuzzi...
...the river, the big brown god, carries me like a slumberous bough through the height of summer, the buzzing of insects, I sail as I speak, I speak as I sail, I can see: the blue sky, clouds and fish swimming across, crabs hiding in treetops, in the green explosion of joie de vivre, a school of fry takes wing like startled quails...
...I can see: Narcissus' perfect countenance, heavy ashlars of Florentine masonry, arcs of bridges traversed by poetry on transcience - Apollinaire - and by the lines of an epic, I am reading...
...I can see myself in the turning of the seasons, and my love, sad as a willow, bowing over me, who am a river sailing through winter, through the city de la Tour Unique du grand Gibet et de la Roue...
[...]
Hatchet
Father, it's time for us to meet in wakefulness.
You, entirely of memories and ashes. I...
You will recognize me easily.
I bear your eyes, your chin, your destiny,
marked on my skin.
Father, it's time we admitted the existence of a hatchet, driven into a knot.
I am not asking you for a miracle.
I am not asking you to tug at the blade.
I assent to the fact
that our hearth will forever be cold.
I am asking you for a simple admission:
we did not obey the laws of growth.
And I accept the excuse:
it was cold,
which is why the handle shivered in our grip.
Father, that is all I am asking for.
I know, you have always said
that birds are merely trees' visitors.
That the wind sifts the leaves only for itself.
But this is the way I am.
How can I throw my slender youth
onto the pyre of memory,
if there is mute steel lurking in it?
Let us admit to its existence, father.
So death will be easier for you
and life less of a burden for me.
Homeless Poet Writing to His Love
I will build us a house made of words.
Nouns will be bricks
and verbs the shutters.
With adjectives we will adorn
the window sills
as with flowers.
In perfect silence we will lie
beneath the baldachin of our love.
In perfect silence.
Our house will be too beautiful
and too fragile for us to endanger it
with an inflation of words.
And if we do speak,
we will name objects
visible only to our eyes.
Because every verb
could shake the foundations
and demolish them.
Therefore, hush, mon amour,
hush, pour le beau demain
à notre maison.
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