Barbara Pogačnik (Slovenia)

Exclusive: European poetry: Curated by Agron Shele

Barbara Pogačnik (Slovenia)

Barbara Pogačnik (1973), Slovenian poet, translator and literary critic, graduated from UCL in Belgium, completed her MA at the Sorbonne in Paris, and has published four poetry books: Poplave (Inundations, 2007), V množici izgubljeni papir (Sheets of Paper Lost in the Crowd, 2008), Modrina hiše / The Blue of the House (2013) and Alica v deželi plaščev (Alice in the Land of Coats, 2016). She is also writing short stories and essays. Her poetry in translations has appeared in reviews and anthologies in more than 30 languages. She has participated in more than 60 different literary festivals and manifestations all over the world and more than 150 authors have appeared in her translations.

WHOLE NOTE

I saw a jeep driving on water,

its tires flattening like disabled people`s feet,

it waddled on the inside of the foot.

In other cities, too,

electricity rose like tide.

The jeep is trying to break, but the water

carries it on. We skidded, we’re going to skid.

We are jeeps, television waves.

Greedy seagulls flying just over the water,

our heads on offer, rising above our

common watery clothes like candys,

convincing people of a

theatrical experiment.

And in other cities, too.

LACE COLLARS

Love means to learn to look at yourself

The way one looks at distant things

For you are only one thing among many.

                                                            Czeslaw Milosz

                                   

The house exists, and in it so many people with lace

collars. They stroll round the living room, glancing at windows.

Shaking one hair at a time from the pillows.

The one without a name, like others, also turns towards windows.

Snow is drifting through them. Turkish windows, or Arabic —

far away like the figure running over snow towards the shore

on the western edge of Europe.

Icy puddles of mild apricot unmoving

under the invasion of the first moon in flight.

People in the lighted house cannot find the golden hair,

the apple of desire: how to stay trusting when you only have

a hairbreadth escape? The sky above the shore spreads out

a giant pale blue handkerchief bristling

with ice crystals in the morning,

the thin strands of cloud across the distant orange of the sun.

The trees bowed all their transparent palms in one

direction, claiming with their black silhouettes that it has all

been written where nurturing veins

run. But even in the corners of car sheet metal,

tiny wounds of rust say how the mouth of aging widens,

turning towards me like a drumskin or a stomach.

I'm crying, I'm crying, and my mother says:

cry! This is the way I run into the hope that the icy blue

railway station will melt down its color.

Later, a window might be found on the building,

someone will open it and fly a flag.

The window is so high that first, you find yourself right next to it,

then, deep from the night, it will look straight into your eyes.

Trust lurks at every corner

like a playful dog, pulling on the leash, tangling

paws into it, eager to dash away.

The office of lost and found shows no windows,

lost even with a telescope. A big walnut table, but

nothing of mine’s been found. The hair on the head

still goes awry like the arms of Celtic trees, the hair

on the pillow still lying level like books.

In these straightlaced days, the country's president

strokes a child in a lace linen hat.

A blue eyed little girl. The boy in the

local library tries to scan a book code,

but grasps the infrared scanner clumsily. Embarrassed,

the book smiles, wedged uncomfortably into the hollow

gap of the couch, like the dead grandmother excitedly

recalling a truth from her life in dreams, one that 

her children didn't know about.

For today I'm freed from her prophecy that I'll sleep through

every morning. The sky's hair travels on. Lace roof decoration

hangs over the gables of stone houses. Nobody behind

the window, only a broken glass sailboat.

The one without a name comes, leaves in disarray, and

returns. He looks like an orange tree in the bathroom.

I heard his words before he said them, I think,

my heart pounding under the limelight in giant

waves that pour on me from all the windows

of a country cathedral. It’s useful to learn

how to perform cardiac massage

on oneself.

Translated by Julija Potrč & Christopher Meredith

Setu, September 2019