Debeljak Aleš:
Lord of Tears
Let it be so: may your ears never again hear the fluttering of jays
that cover the gutters of the watchtowers like rotting celestial fruit.
May your steps again measure the endless depths of drawing rooms where whispered
messages from faraway palaces revive the dreams of distant ancestors,
dreams of endless lands, where the same name is spoken with the same
fear. May your spit harden to crystal. May your hand touch
no one. May the heroes who strode across the Illyrian hills and lay down
on the shores of the warm sea foretell your future. Unavoidable alone.
May the salty fluid splash for a moment through the ruined walls
the soldiers left behind. May the commanders stare in dead earnest at the time
of memories which must thicken gradually, like wax. With it
you will seal up the legacy of pain which grows steadily in the guts of
your living poets. They will run with you towards the shores of the
divided island. It will be too late when you bow down before a crude star.
Aleš Debeljak
(1961 - ) A poet, essayist, translator and prominent literary cartographer. Debeljak graduated in comparative literature from the University of Ljubljana and received his Ph.D. in Social Thought from Syracuse University, New York. He is a former Fulbright fellow at the University of California-Berkeley and a fellow of Budapest Institute of Advanced Study. Debeljak published five books of essays and five books of poems, including Anxious Moments (White Pine Press, 1994; originally Minute strahu, 1990). A translator of selected poems by John Ashbery, he won the Prešeren Foundation Prize / Slovenian National Book Award and Miriam Lindberg Israel Poetry for Peace Prize-Tel Aviv. His books have appeared in Croatian, Polish, Hungarian, Czech, German, and Italian translation. Debeljak has edited Serbian, Croatian, and Slovenian sections for Shifting Borders: East European Poetry in the Eighties (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1993) and edited Prisoners of Freedom: Contemporary Slovenian Poetry (Pedernal Press, 1993).Author's web page
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