Kocbek Edvard:
The Time of Poems

They say the time of poems is passing,

man has sold all his surplus,

deficiencies are tiring,

the fear of death is demolishing

poetics after poetics,

what we write are just signs,

only a fool eats what isn’t there.

We are all in an exhausted space.

Time sets and rises again.

Every darkness is a miracle,

every muddle is a cure.

Violence and unease are relentless.

Our native land has gone abroad

like a girl before a mirror,

delighted with her own face.

The sea is enormously deep.

 

Now I’m coming back, my dearest.

The gardener’s open hand glows with charms.

She never repeats the gesture.

I copy her by tattooing

everything that lives and lose my fear.

The ravings of an idiom beyond belief

steam from the seven wounds of holy folly.

I leave through ravaged regions.

I have let all my fields lie fallow.

My queen is still out pollinating.

You will know me by my bare feet

and deep dreams of a mountain

that went to the prophet.

Translated by Michael Biggins