Edvard Kocbek- “Nothing is Lost”

[Cupke_pe_Korce]

Translated by Michael Scammell & Veno Taufer
© 2004 Princeton University Press

Edvard Kocbek was born in 1904, the sun of a church organist, in a part of present day Slovenia that was then in Austro-Hungary. Despite a lengthy postwar publication ban on his writing, Kocbek went on to win the Preseren Prize, Slovenia’s highest literary award, in 1964. More books of both prose and poetry followed, including his Collected Poems in 1977, which sealed his reputation as Slovenia’s greatest modern-day poet.


Now

When I spoke
they said I was dumb,
when I wrote
they said I was blind,
when I walked away
they said I was lame.
And when they called me back
they found I was deaf.
They confounded my senses
And judged I was mad.
Now I am glad.

Climax

Night dilates its lenses
sucks in
the earth and the stars
thrusts them and
you and me into the flaming sky
like a torch in a fiery procession.

And when you open
your bottomless eyes
you are still mightier than the night,
you encompass both space and time,
the dance of the savage cosmos,
ecstasies, catastrophes and laws,
and the seven eons of creation.

Then you wake me,
I widen my pupils,
I crouch over your dance
and drink the eternity of your eyes,
all night I subdue my terrible limitations
until I have mastered your love
and become a giant among giants,
a solitary man.

[Cupke_pe_Korce]

The fire has died,
the wind has dropped,
the man has gone quiet
and turned away,
night has opened,
the earth is a ship
to wonderland.

I lie on my back
and look at the moon,
silver breasts speed
across the red blot
and chase after me,
how it's a tortoise, now a deer,
and now a magic kite.

Then, in a cave
of immense silence,
I meet myself,
It's true I was here
and I don't know when,
and I was also the same
but I don't know how.

[Cupke_pe_Korce]

Now We Are Alone

Doors made of keys,
ceiling of skulls,
feet of clay,
garden of semen,
horizon of eyes,
couch of sighs.

Smoothed custom,
the pilgrimage of things,
memory and oblivion,
and all that stings
end in a pure swoon
when we are alone.

Before conception we are nothing,
after death - a corpse,
this abyss of ours
is a free fall
into a bottomless pit,
over it is a bridge.


Ancient Miracle

Listen to what is going on
in my poor head,
something quiet and merry
is being hatched between my brow and my chin,
which I cannot see,
but I can feel it tickling me,
though I cannot say it,
it is something I hear
but cannot reach,
something I reach
but cannot grasp,
something I grasp
but remains forever
indecipherable and unknown,
something that quivers
and warms my bare feet
and cools my hot brow
and remains an indelible memory
and will stay silent forever,
more than a mystery
and more than love,
the deepest essence of things,
something for which there is no word,
which is happy oblivion,
a blessed presentiment,
something constantly
on the other side
but always within me.

[Cupke_pe_Korce]

All night I stumble
through deep moonlight,
to the left and right of me
lie greenishly naked bodies,
like marble statues
pulled from the sea
that once drowned them
in columned temples,
and an anchor has served
a head or a hand with a wreath.

Now I know I am a diver,
I have been lowered into the depths
of foolish history,
dense waters resist me,
seaweed plucks at me,
the sunken world glimmers
with the world's things askew,
victims like around the arena,
the ruined sky falls and falls
into its sarcophagus.

All night I stumble
through deep moonlight,
greenishly naked bodies
lie to the left and right of me,
only tonight I have learned
the unutterable truth,
I shall live more cruelly,
And more tenderly die.

[Cupke_pe_Korce]

Earth, I get everything from you, earth
to you I return, my flesh smells of holy
sacrifice and mortal sorrow, long will I
look upward by day and by night.

Earth, our grave, how lonely you are, earth
I am a sweet dark grain among grains, bewildered
by your depths, birds chirrup over our heads,
one of them will peck us up.

[Cupke_pe_Korce]

Drunk with change I lie on the ground
and press my brow to the earth. I tremble and
dare not rise, I see too much, I hear
too much, the whole earth spins, this motionless swinging
and soundless throbbing is driving us apart, the rocking induces
ever more stupor and checks us.

Then we rise and run forward again,
after you who never stop, and again
we stagger wearily and again rush
after you, O human persistence, last
love of a frightened heart. We ask
no quarter; comrades, we must just hold
fast and never let go.

[Cupke_pe_Korce]

O noise of waters, collapse of the universe,
woman, put your ear to my side,
yonder stretches eternal solemnity, hold my
hand, I cannot tell you how
thunderous is this magnificence, clasp me tight,
bright death is bursting my body, my eyes
see no more, my ears hear no more,
my heart spills into nocturnal grass,
the heavy wind tears at me, I fall sweetly apart,
the earth is not finished yet. O terrible
Son of the living God, I mutely implore you, help
me in my love.

[EXODUS]

Hera e pare qe e lexoj kete poet dhe me te vertete ja vlen t'ju besh zbor perqendrimit te goglave te syve!

Qe mos e sillja koken duar bosh, po i rrokullis edhe une 5 vargje.


Death of words

I am unable to sleep,
a big disaster
surrounds me,
words that I have spoken
and sent out into the world
are suddenly returning weary,
ill, dreadfully anxious,
they seek a refuge from destruction,
flutter, squeal,
chirp haltingly, swarm around me
they are fleeing from triteness and oblivion,
from the glass eye of a corpse,
from a laser beam that ignores
its reflection,
the infected words
cram up in greedy haste, they
stammer, writhe in pain,
they've lost their way home,
their resting place,
they flutter above me
as I lie empty and mute in the dark.
I recognize them, tamed, wild,
sad and dreamy,
frightened, big, treacherous,
heroic, pious, all motherly,
all mine, my father's, all my essence,
my recollections, my presentiments.
my prophecy, my dying.
The room is crammed with the in,
they settle on objects, are unable to leave,
burden me, beseech me as they lie dying,
sobbing repeatedly:
all tree trunks desecrated
all nests destroyed
all mouths mute.
The disaster inhabits me,
there is no place I can return them to,
am unable to console them,
stretch my arm
or open my mouth,
am unable to caress the word despair or
say anything to the words solace, deliverance,
the words toy and grace are choking me,
on my eyes land those shot as they fled
man, mother, love, loyalty,
the unhappy ones I neglected or never uttered
settle on my chest
but one of them has nestled
right between my trembling lips,
never have I seen it in the lexicon.

Kam besim te pa shkundur se ne gjuhen nga e cila u perkthyen, tingellojne akoma më te arrira!