Eden

by Meta Kušar

Prvi ima njegove oči,

drugi njegove lase,

tretji njegov glas.

Dvajseti njegove stavke,

dvestoti njegov posluh,

tisoči njegov smeh,

tristo tisoči njegov jezik.

Imam jaz njegovo srce?

Nisem si izmišljevala.

Nič prirejala. Nič čakala.

Samo pričakovala.

Okušam domišljijo starih in novih dni.

Kakšen vesel študij.

One

by Meta Kušar

The first has his eyes,

the second his hair,

the third his voice.

The twentieth his sentences,

the two hundredth his ear for music.

The thousandth his laughter,

the three hundred thousandth his tongue.

Do I have his heart?

I wasn’t imagining things.

Embellishing anything. I never waited.

Only expected.

I taste the imagination of days old and new.

What a happy course.

translated from Slovenian by Ana Jelnikar & Barbara Siegel Carlson

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Meta Kušar, poet and essayist, was born in Ljubljana in 1952. Her poetry collection Ljubljana was translated into Slovak in 2008 and English in 2010 (tr. by Ana Jelnikar & Stephen Watts). Her most recent publication is a book of interviews with a range of prominent Slovene artists she has interviewed over the last decade. Since 1980 she has regularly contributed to the Slovene National Radio and the RAI-Trieste with cultural and historical talks.

Ana Jelnikar’s most recent publications include Look Back, Look Ahead: Selected Poems of Srečko Kosovel (Ugly Duckling Presse, co-translated with Barbara Siegel Carlson, 2010), and Meta Kušar’s poetry collection Ljubljana (Arc Publications, 2010, co-translated with Stephen Watts). Her book on Slovene poet Srečko Kosovel and Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore is forthcoming from Oxford University Press (India).

Barbara Siegel Carlson is the author of the poetry collection Fire Road (Dream Horse Press, 2013) and co-translator with Ana Jelnikar of Look Back, Look Ahead, Selected Poems of Srečko Kosovel (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2010). Poems and translations have appeared in Prairie Schooner, New Ohio Review, and are forthcoming in Metamorphosis and Avatar Review. She is currently co-editing an anthology of contemporary Slovene poetry.

Circumference

Poetry in Translation

Eden

One