Slovenian Literator

Novak A. Boris:
Sonnet Of Sonnets

Memory has two wings: the first is past, the second is future,

A luxury that hurts, a name of the silence.

Only dreams can weave time with water:

A magical mirror, a distant face of milk.

Truth is always being born at the edge:

A child is building the whole world out of clay -

A sand castle is stronger than emptiness.

A mother eagle is shielding calls of the weak ones.

Anguish opens like a curtain.

The child is a crown. I crown you, my life.

The densest moment: terrible is the gold of the body.

The blooming of the world demands a serene vigil.

Here, my child, I bequeath to you all the wonders,

The knees where I cradle you into floating.

Translated by The author and Richard Jackson

Archived by thezaurus on 09/07/01 | permalink |

Boris A. Novak

(1953 - ) is a poet, playwright and translator. He graduated in comparative literature from the University of Ljubljana where he also received his Ph.D. He has worked in the National Theatre, and was an editor of the leading intellectual magazine, the New Review (Nova revija), which published a special issue on Slovenian independence in 1987 that sparked a government campaign against authors and editors. A winner of the Preseren Foundation Prize/National Book Award in 1984, Novak worked as an editor at a major publishing house. As a president of The Peace Committee of International PEN he organized major long-term humanitarian assistance for writers and artists of Bosnia and Hercegovina. Novak writes poetry, dramatic plays and children's radio plays and has published more than thirty individual books. A translator of Mallarmé, Valéry and Edmond Jabès, Novak explores the lyrical and existential potentials of strict poetic form.