Contemporary Slovenian Poetry 3. [antikvár]

From a longer poem »MOBILIZATIONS« (in III parts) II. Mobilization for Life An eccentric, deserter and atheist, seeking refuge in agronomy, Goethe and the discipline of children. Whose life tosses him to and fro on a mine field like an unsaddled chess knight. Who depicts the letter L: Lehrling, but makes no use of the basic gears and never brakes. Who reads Pigs Feed, his feet in a cold bath - to improve concentration - and who hopes to discover a shelter in botanical books, the ground beneath his feet, but cannot find a coltsfoot leaf big enough to cover his own shadow. Who brought my mother on their first date a bouquet of two ladles and then removed himself to a distance of 800 km. Once on the field, he changed the course of the bishop again, directing him back towards the regal chess piece; the one that can move painlessly in all directions, at times simply with a glance without a move, towards her hiding within herself the moves of all moves, watching over them. And I: the outcome of a family vote in February 1970; nobody imposed a veto and the embryo freely grew into me, so that today I can calmly look upon my path, a trail, already longer than life, so I can see your life ahead of me, much longer than the path. And so my father invested his unfinished herbarium into me, and my thoughts crammed between the piles of books like flattened flowers until, in my first collection, all this vegetative erudition exploded and all the blades, precisely ordered, could once again occupy their former volume. And now I am faced with an endless wasteland of flowers, words, willing and fresh, contracting and expanding at my order like the universe. What am I to do with it, here, in this twisted place, cold-blooded. And now in front of my eyes: an endless featurless pampa