Contempo- rary Slovenian poetry 2 - Ljudmila

Across the squares of Fužine blows
a mild wind from the faraway Alps,
sifting through the leaves of fallen newspapers.
Fužine, 14 July 1999
On Second Thought
On second thought, I was never
a child of nature. I imagined dragon flies
were helicopters and a shark’s sharp fin
was a periscope. On second thought,
the cowboys and Indians of westerns
were maybe not more real,
but way more important than the farmers
who took milk to the local co-op
every morning at the same time, along the same route
past our house. On second thought,
the seven o’clock cartoon was
a hundred times more exciting
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than any storm, no matter how wild,
breaking out over Morost. On second
thought, for years the only real sunset
was in black and white.
Fužine, 14 July 1999
Writing It Down
When you wait for your bus, all the others
come first, some more than once, before yours,
always the last. It isn’t true that it’s always like this,
but it’s often enough that your skepticism fades and before you know it,
you’re studying the ecliptics of the sun, the moon and the planets; you cast
the cards; you’re trying to trace, in the dim light of a streetlamp,
the uncountable hair-thin lines
branching out from your lifeline.
I tremble—it isn’t true that in the years I wasn’t writing poems
I wasn’t making poetry. I composed them in my head, some
in prose, some in meter, verses, each one shorter, each
more stripped, opaque, ever darker, ever closer
to the spells of black magic. I forgot
most of them right away, or within a few days, but some
got nailed into my brain, pressing harder and harder
on my thoughts, directing my actions. Nothing special—
just the way I lace my shoes, yawn, how I