Do You See This? Do You See This? Get off the horse, marshal, shave your calf, coltsfoot. He stomps on my winter stores, I dust the palace in the buttonhole. There I will hurl a needy child composed of slick silicate tiles, the lake will begin to gargle like the span of Rustaveli’s mouth. Time, pave the way for one last snow. Lion, kiss the lioness. Dock, remember the marble. Eyes aren’t visible alone. Do you see this? Do you see this? Time, pave the way for one last snow. Lion, kiss the lioness. Dock, remember the marble. Eyes aren’t visible alone. Translated from the Slovenian by Brian Henry
Fields of Zinc Do you think someone will come? Do you think I’ll hear them sing? Do you think I’ll have a bloody hand? I’ve been hired to murmur. We murmur, we murmur, put our legs over the pipe, love ourselves, love ourselves, and at the same time swim with spring. Do you think the lion will betray him? How would it betray him if it can’t sit? Do you think they’re unloaded? We lock the steam in the cellar. We murmur, we murmur, put our legs over the pipe, love ourselves, love ourselves, and at the same time swim with spring. Translated from the Slovenian by Brian Henry
From the author: These two Tomaž Šalamun poems are from his 1986 book Ljubljana Spring, which is an outlier among his 53 books, mainly because he wanted to try writing with more conventional techniques (particularly repetition of entire lines or stanzas). The poems embody Šalamun’s singular vision, but often in a song-like form.
Tomaž Šalamun (1941-2014) published more than 50 books of poetry in Slovenia. 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 later held visiting professorships at various universities in the U.S. A comprehensive volume of selected poems (edited and translated by Brian Henry) is forthcoming from Milkweed Editions in 2024.
Brian Henry is the author of eleven books of poetry, most recently Permanent State (Threadsuns, 2020), and the prose book Things Are Completely Simple: Poetry and Translation (Parlor, 2022). He has translated Tomaž Šalamun’s Woods and Chalices (Harcourt, 2008), Aleš Debeljak’s Smugglers (BOA Editions, 2015), and five books by Aleš Šteger. His work has received numerous honors, including two NEA fellowships, the Alice Fay di Castagnola Award, a Howard Foundation fellowship, and the Best Translated Book Award.