Tomaž Šalamun, Slovenia

To Read: To Love

As I read you, I swim. Like a bear bear with paws,
you push me into bliss. You lie on top of me, who
tore me apart. You I fell in love with unto death, first
among the born. It took but a moment and I was your bonfire.
I am safe as never before. You are the ultimate
feeling of fulfillment: to know where longing comes from.
I’m in the soft grave whenever inside you. You cut, you illuminate,
every layer. Time bursts into flame and disappears, I hear hymns
When I watch you. You are strict and demanding, concrete. And I
cannot speak. I know I long for you, hard gray steel. For one of
your touches. I give up everything. Look, the late afternoon sun
Is dashing against the walls of the courtyard in Urbino. I have died
for you. I feel you, I use you. Torturer. You uproot and you torch me,
always. And into the places you have destroyed, paradise flows

Heretic

The stars scattered like dice
And the sky troubled by a fearful pattern
Shipwrecks men and saints
The thorny wreath of oblivion does not save them.

Hell's pot boils, spilling over the filth
Boyars, priests, beggars slurp up the thick soup
No one's spoon is long enough
To scrape greasy salvation's bottom.

Brothers, we have gone through to the end
Munched fire, thrown a new ball
On the roulette of the sky. From every direction
The void between stars blows our sails,

A breeze keeps away the mold
From our open and simple tombs.
A new constellation will appear in our nothingness
Just as a worm was born in your faith.

© Tomaž Šalamun, Slovenia

Tomaž Šalamun, Slovenian poet born in Zagreb in 1941 is considered one of the most important postwar Central European poets. He taught at several American Universities and was during several years Cultural Attaché to the Slovenian Consulate in New York. Several of his poetry books have been published in English and in many other languages. Šalamun received the European Prize in Münster, Germany and recently the Golden Wreath at Struga Poetry Evenings, 2009