Tomaž Šalamun

16.III.1979

translated from Slovenian by Brian Henry

In the tomb of the ancestors Alejandro Gallegos
Duval smells of warm damp salt. I ride
horses. I’m learning. When will I lose
enough so that I’ll sober up?
I see fear in people’s eyes. Does
nature sustain me because she also burns from
the victims? Three days ago, when I
left the house to buy a ticket
for Slovenia, the landlady stopped me
and gave me a telegram.
HAVE WARNED YOU. STAKES WERE HIGH.
GAME WAS ONE. HAVE LOST EVERYTHING.
WHAT I AM
GETTING IS TO SUPERFICIAL. STAY AND
ENJOY YOUR BOYS AND CHEAP THRILLS.
METKA—
BAD GIRL: OBVIOUSLY NOT TIME FOR
MARRIAGE NOW, I answered with a dry
throat. We know this. This, which takes your
breath away, is called a crisis. The earth
collapses, sorrow blows, and there are plenty
of new fields. Alejandro’s eyes are always
deeper. His paintings are called
ŠALAMUN I ŠALAMUN II ŠALAMUN III

How are yours? I only still love and
sleep. I don’t know who balances
the hours of my protagonists. I also wrote:
more information that might interest you.
At the time when you sent your telegrams, there
was a 7.0-magnitude earthquake here. Every other
city would topple to the ground, but not
Ciudad, because it’s built on water. The color
of the sun that I faithfully gathered on my
skin for you for the wedding, you see? No investment.

TOMAŽ ŠALAMUN (1941–2014) published more than fifty books of poetry in Slovenia. Translated into over twenty-five languages, his poetry received numerous awards, including the Jenko Prize, the Prešeren Prize, the European Prize for Poetry, and the Mladost Prize.

BRIAN HENRY is the author of eleven books of poetry and the recent prose book Things Are Completely Simple: Poetry and Translation (Parlor, 2022). He is editing and translating Tomaž Šalamun’s Selected Poems 1964-2014 for Milkweed Editions.