Tomaž Šalamun
Tomaž Šalamun (1941-2014) published more than 55 books of poetry in his native Slovenian. Translated into over 25 languages, his poetry received numerous awards, including the Jenko Prize, the Prešeren Prize, the European Prize for Poetry, and the Mladost Prize. In the 1990s, he served for several years as the Cultural Attaché for the Slovenian Embassy in New York, and he held visiting professorships at various universities in the U.S.
Six poems from The History of Light Is Orange Translated by Brian Henry
August Bora
The bora blows
in odes to genitals.
Ships splash
because the sea splashes them.
Wind, sand, gasoline move through the air.
In odes to genitals
a flower is supported by a stem, a pine
cone by a pine.
The telegraphist yawns,
looks through the window.
He cannot identify
with all the messages.
I’d like to go into a cinema
in the bora
so that orange sand would
strike the orange walls from the outside.
Plateau
I said I’d climb over this
clay but I slipped.
Above, there’s a plateau. I take the path
to the plateau. I look down at the frogs.
I throw stones at the frogs.
Why?
It’s September for three more days.
Did I remember the Nile
because I saw the print of a horse
hoof ? My knees are brown
from the soil.
I didn’t hit a frog.
Come On
Shit! Every moron is full
of imagination and steps on the rug
and wipes his shoes and puts a shoe down
and is in socks and the host
comes and says lie down and there are
trams below and urinals and trees.
Green and brown. And an antenna and ponds.
First I make flour and then
rolls from the dough. Then I invite
the guests onto the rug and lie
with my chin on the pattern where the palm tree
is drawn. But I’m clever
and roll up the rug and there are guests
in the night and only sometimes do they see
some star in the crevice.
Then I brush them all so they don’t
go home disheveled. Come on!
Chapel
A neighbor will go
to the chapel
and spill
gasoline
on the floor. The chapel
will burn down,
the sky will be
eighty degrees
Celsius.
“Flowers grow on white sand”
Flowers grow on white sand,
a policeman’s aide sits in a black hut.
A deer steps onto the white sand.
The fence is still wet from rain!
A Person Is Fragrant
A heel is only technique,
an extension of walking.
The farmers are upset.
Autumn is unidentified.
The ship is silent. The soul is silent.
Clay softens into a triangle,
protecting the side. A tree,
a tree, a fact: summer is gone!
A person is fragrant.
Nature is fragrant.
A stream seen in a stream is fragrant—
reason is built.
The stations are all numbered.
A gong strikes at every station.
Whoever misses the construction and the crowd
doesn’t hear, doesn’t see.