At the carousel. Beside me
a forlorn seal, sick of
circus tricks. Creature of my right
hemisphere. She puts her head
in my lap.
A carousel in the meadow.
Seats buckled on ropes twirl round;
Some empty. Those lifted
by the upward force. Wooden surfaces of chairs
bare.
A rocket crackles. Someone fires a gun.
By the bang you try to guess
what type bullet.
With the palm of my hand I graze the blackish back:
animal and human skin
equal,
tenderness. A giddy glance from below
– in one round I’m a child
lifted onto a seat by adult hands,
after some that pass between, I help my own
rise to her feet, to start walking.
For one’s own history,
fleeting ties, unrealized
life, there’s no way
to measure the bulk.
Absorbed in touch.
Although shapes are indistinct in their affinity
each contour palpably
darkens.
The funfair around me disbands,
The mechanics turn off the gears,
it’s time to go home.
Nameless night carousel.
I stay sitting for a while. The ropes loosen,
they settle
lightly.
Translated from the Slovene by Miriam Drev
Miriam Drev is a poet, novelist, literary translator from English and German, as well as a literary critic and publicist born in Ljubljana, Slovenia. In 2022 her sixth book of poems Ancestral Healing was published, receiving the Veronika Award (Veronikina nagrada) in 2023, for the best Slovenian poetry collection of the year. Her poems have been translated into many languages and are published in several anthologies of Slovene poetry as well as in literary magazines abroad. She lives as an independent writer and translator in Ljubljana.
