Blackbird ArchiveYesterday a House, Today Nothing
In a slow unsyncopated rhythm I pass a house
with one window. I go, I go, I stop. From its huge pane
it summons me: a dark spot, as wide as a cap.
I read about it in an ancient Polish tale. I waver,
lick my nails, watch, weigh my chances: it is a good target,
if not for the stone I throw, then for my landing. It will be
an emergency landing, I can see that, happy to accept this.
What matters is that I get in and fold my parachute, blow away
breadcrumbs and light a fire with my hair. Personal sacrifice
and collective safety. It really burns, but I’m not against it,
not at all. It was burning in the room, a modest drawing room.
A woman in middle age, who had studied piano playing
in London, doled out evergreen melodies, irregular verbs
and slaps, which rang long. Still resounding in my head,
they echo and vanish like smoke when in a slow
unsyncopated rhythm I pass the house.
Aleš Debeljak is the author of Smugglers (forthcoming from BOA Editions, Ltd. in 2015) and Without Anesthesia: New and Selected Poems (Persea Books, 2011), both translated from the Slovenian by Brian Henry. Debeljak is the author of eight books of poetry and twelve books of essays in Slovenian, and his work has been translated into English, Japanese, German, Croatian, Serbian, Polish, Hungarian, Czech, Spanish, Slovak, Finnish, Lithuanian, and Italian. He has received a 1990 Prešeren Foundation Award, the Miriam Lindberg Israel Poetry for Peace Prize, the Chiqyu Poetry Prize in Japan, and a 2009 Jenko Prize. Debeljak teaches in the Department of Cultural Studies at the University of Ljubljana in Slovenia. Photo by Miha Fras
Brian Henry has published six collections of poetry, including Astronaut (Arc, 2000/Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2002), Graft (Arc, 2002/New Issues, 2003), American Incident (Salt Publishing, 2002), Quarantine (Ahsahta Press, 2006), The Stripping Point (Counterpath Press, 2007) and In the Unlikely Event of a Water (Equipage, 2007). Henry won the Alice Fay di Castagnola Award from the Poetry Society of America for Quarantine . Other honors include the Poetry Society’s George Bogin Memorial Award, the 2006 Carol Weinstein Poetry Prize, and a Forward Prize nomination for Astronaut . He has co-edited Verse since 1995, and he also co-edited The Verse Book of Interviews (Verse Press, 2005). He currently teaches literature and creative writing at the University of Richmond in Virginia. Brian Henry’s translation of Tomaž Šalamun’s Woods and Chalices has just been published by Harcourt