-translated, from the Slovenian, by Ana Jelnikar and Barbara Siegel Carlson
O, I don’t care what you are,
I don’t ask about your ways,
nor where you’ve gone, where you’ve been,
whether you’ve killed, or you’ve sinned.
I know this terrible passion too well,
of the soul that drives you to grow and to fall,
yes, when you’ve come to the end of the world,
ceasing to know what brought you there.
Give me your hand, friend,
give it to me, even though you’re my enemy,
give it to me, so that in my hand you’ll know
what it is to want to love, but can’t.
Translators
Barbara Siegel Carlson is the author of 2 books of poetry Once in Every Language (2017) and Fire Road (2013) a and chapbook Between this Quivering. She is co-translator (with Ana Jelnikar) of Look Back, Look Ahead, Selected Poems of Srečko Kosovel and co-editor (with Richard Jackson) of A Bridge of Voices: Contemporary Slovene Poetry and Perspectives. (2017). Her poetry and translations have appeared in Salamander, The Carolina Quarterly, Mid-American Review, Lake Effect, Agni and others. She lives in Carver, MA.
Ana Jelnikar is the foremost translator of contemporary Slovenian poetry into English. Her most recent publications include Look Back, Look Ahead: Selected Poems of Srečko Kosovel (2010) co-translated with Barbara Siegel Carlson, Meta Kušar’s poetry collection Ljubljana (2010) co-translated with Stephen Watts) and Iztok Osojnik’s selected poems Elsewhere (2011) co-translated with Maria Jastrzȩbska). She is also the author of Universalist Hopes in India and Europe: The Worlds of Rabindranath Tagore and Srečko Kosovel (Oxford University Press, 2016). She lives in Ljubljana, Slovenia.
Srečko Kosovel (1904-1926)
one of Slovenia’s first modernists, is now considered one of Central Europe’s major modernist poets. In 1925 he prepared a manuscript for publication called The Golden Boat, but it was subsequently lost and never published. Soon after, he died of meningitis at the age of 22. His Complete Works was published in 1977. The Golden Boat, a selection of his poems translated into English by Bert Pribac and David Brooks, appeared in 2008 from Salt Press. Look Back, Look Ahead, Selected Poems of Srečko Kosovel, co-translated by Ana Jelnikar and Barbara Siegel Carlson (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2010) is the first U.S. edition of his work. An expanded edition is currently being prepared.
