Who are You?
Though I wear many years,
It seems as though since yesterday
In one breath I traversed the earth.
I would wander ever more.
Who is he, who treats me to dinner,
Makes offerings from his table,
Who lights up, extinguishes the days,
Outpaces and draws out
These lives
Of ours and of strangers.
Your painful world
Where ink blots out the stars, who are you?
Your world that teaches me
Of humility and fear, who are you?
Who is he, who alters
The brave into the humble,
Who dares to reach into my heart
To turn a naive thought sly.
What’s left of the heart,
Of ailment and joy,
What’s left of the world
Will sluice to this imitation of life.
Thousand Years On
That night as we slipped away,
You showed me the path to the skies,
You gave me the strength,
With which hearts endow their beloved.
Is this too little, or is this all,
Is this asking too much, or am I wrong?
A thousand years on I’ll still be here,
The sun will be my heart,
And one of a thousand stars across the night sky
Will shelter me beneath its name.
I long to sing, to echo,
I long to outrun my own mortality
To strip the wings of time
The only righteous ruler.
The precious fruit is harvested from me,
Poetry, my son, and a linden tree.
Yet now it calls, shielded by inexorability,
For my body as well as my soul.
A thousand years on I’ll still be here,
The sun will be my heart,
And one of a thousand stars across the night sky
Will shelter me beneath its name.
And tomorrow will rise once more
Dressed in the colors of yesterday,
And what befell us will befall.
A thousand years on I’ll still be here,
The sun will be my heart,
And one of a thousand stars across the night sky
Will shelter me beneath its name.
Day Melts
Day melts away into crimson laced clouds,
As early as tomorrow it will break on a new horizon.
Day will draw dawn into a new kingdom,
And happiness now dormant
Awaits only the rising sun and waking eyes.
Would you be the same once more with the same people,
Would you be you again among others?
Would you change anything, add something,
Lend your smile to more people?
Stop for a moment beside the scented blossoms.
Take me there, where they still smile,
Where tear-strewn faces cry out loud,
Take me there, where slow paced songs play as if they had all the time in the world.
Day melts away decked in crimson lace clothes,
As early as tomorrow it will wake to a new horizon.
Day will draw dawn into a younger kingdom,
And joy now slumbering,
Awaits the wake of children and men.
About the author:
Vlado Kreslin is a Slovenian poet and folk rock musician. For decades he has been one of the most beloved and influential artists in former Yugoslavia. In 2009 he was given an honorary fellowship at Yale University and represented the Slovenian Ministry of Culture abroad. Urška Charney’s translation of his selected poetry will be published by Guernica Editions in 2012.
About the translator:
Urška Charney is a Slovene photographer and graphic designer. Urška’s photographs have been published internationally, including recent publications in the magazines B.Inspired (Sweden), The Yale Bulletin (USA), Wine Enthusiast (USA), 5×5 Literary Magazine (USA), and Museums & Heritage (UK).
Recent design work includes the design for an exhibition entitled "The Dark Arts" at the National Museum of Crime and Punishment in Washington, DC (Spring 2010), which was featured on Fox News, and graphic work for PublicAffairs Books.
She is head of design for ARCA, a non-profit think tank on issues in art crime.
Urška is also a translator of poetry and prose from Slovene into English. Upcoming publications include her translation of Luka Novak’s novel The Golden Shower and the collected poetry of Vlado Kreslin, both of which will be published by Guernica Editions in 2012. Individual poems in translation are published in Erbacce (UK), Modern Poetry in Translation (UK), Confrontation (USA), and Blood & Honey (Bosnia). She lives in Italy.