Barbara Pogačnik (Slovenia)

Encounter, Setting Sail
                       
Endless papers, naked white
that delicately crumble under my fingers:
children’s games bow to me
as all the children play.
I glow inside these candle-lit fingers,
but still I’m pale among the surprise
of such greenery arising from the knuckles of spring.
The waters in their translucent moments
color my wings like a dragonfly’s.
 
On tiptoe I walked touching each fruit and its pulp,
each one small inside its sap.
On every skin where I hesitated
a fountain sprung, and in the sun
where I leaned and bloomed, I didn’t know
if this was language pouring out, braiding
into a voice already soaked in streams of ink.
 
One flows into another. Headlights crisscross
from every direction. The life-spoon dips into various dishes.
On the roof the weathervane spins; in a handful of clouds
a beloved hand withers filling me with life.
 
In an overgrown dew-covered field, I find a basalt
priest, petrified in the leaves, pure and ageless,
untouched by human passion.
 
One moment I carry
to the next, whose colored hues
I cast on wavering bodies
and so they shiver from silence,
while the nail of death is driven into every face;
a moment’s flesh pressed into the fleeting speech of thirsty time.
 
 
Translated by Barbara Siegel Carlson
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