DANE ZAJC - FOUR POEMS

Dane Zajc (*26. oktober 1929 – †21. oktober 2005)

THE KILLERS

(Ibržniki, Dane Zajc)

The killers came from the Outland, killing
and killing and killing in the spring
and filling every crevice
with that seed. And ripening

a bone blooms between the marrows
a skull peeps out, and come the cries
of children running up to mummy
with handfuls of human eyes.

(Potepuh, Dane Zajc)

Oh, lay my face between your paps
And drown me in your endless peace
Oh, teach me how with gentle steps
To bear myself, to make a truce

Faraway they know my name
The whisper came for me tonight
Despair and his accomplice Time
Accompany the early light

Were I to stay and stay for life
Despair would hammer his divorce
And injure this discovered love
And hollow out a lover’s face

It’s better to be on my way
With only here and now of you
Than to allow the prophesy
Of loveless Time to be the truth

I was never more than poor
Never wanted less than good
Never wanted more than warmth
Never kissing where I could

The love I had was never full
Until it met me at your lips
And poured a bliss into my soul
And played upon my fingertips

There’s that summons in the wind
Drumming me into the open
I’m leaving it, this quiet room
This one-way conversation

Sleep. Sleep on and sleep without
My body and my fiction
I know my heart, I know my route
My worth and my addiction

(Rože noči, D. Zajc)

I gathered black flowers
Gathered them by night
In the hopeless meadow
In the poison light

I drank a passion drink
Drank a poison drink
Drank it seeming sweet
Sold my soul to seeming sweet
And sold my soul too cheap

Stamping on the higher slope
That black horse will have his way
He’s muscled like a muscled rope
The one the Devil cannot break

The force of him can force the field
And force across that meadow
The spark of him is fire-heeled
A flyer in the fire’s shadow

Down the lonely length of hours
His raging ruts my head
Spattering black flowers
With blood’s corrosive red

(Dva vrana, Dane Zajc)

Over earth frozen tight
black flight, black on white
two crows

cra, cra
nae faurer can we fa

blown frozen over earth
over water frozen white
winter white

cra, cra
nane ava, nane ava

black famine blown over
frozen earth, black on white
go the crows

cra, cra
wing wing awa

Prevedel: Angus Reid