This Translation Tuesday, Cvetka Lipuš places us lovingly amidst summers speculated, imagined, and half-remembered. It’s a delicious place to be, an infinity of summers in loose procession, their light and heat restorative, the best of them able to forestall the worst horrors. Because solar heat slows time and addles the brain, Lipuš asks her questions lollingly, sun-drunk, swaddled in the season’s “simple happiness”.
How many times was the sun at its zenith
how many summers went by
who keeps count of them
ears of corn are tallied
a column of grain rising to meet the universe
are only one’s own counted or also others
am I to begin with the dog days when Achilles
sets sail for Troy in the heat
he glistens with his brass
or with those when the smell of coltsfoot in the ravine
drowns the school at the bottom of hot timelessness
shall I compile a list of my favorites
are others also included
maybe the summer when the landscape
was changed they stopped bringing fear home
the war left behind its front
maybe the summer when time comes off its hinges
the simple happiness of holidays is worn
beneath it is tanned skin
Translated from the Slovenian by Tom Priestly
Cvetka Lipuš was born in Eisenkappel (Austria). She studied Comparative Literature and Slavic Studies at the University of Klagenfurt and Library and Information Science at the University of Pittsburgh (PA). She lived in the US for 15 years and now lives and works in Salzburg, Austria. Having grown up as member of the Slovenian minority in Austria, she writes poetry in Slovenian. To date, she has published eight collections of poetry. Her poems have been translated into several languages. Available in English translation is the poetry collection What we are, when we are, published (Athabasca University Press, 2018). Her work has been recognized by the Slovenian state by being selected for the national Prešeren Fund Award in 2016. Her poetry collections have been shortlisted for several literary prizes. She has also received several fellowships and awards from the Austrian Government and the Province of Carinthia.
Tom Priestly was born in Uganda in 1937, grew up in England, and emigrated to Canada in 1966. He taught Russian language and Slavic linguistics at the University of Alberta and conducted research on dialect structure and language maintenance in the Slovenian-speaking part of Austria. Since 1992, he has published translations and co-translations of the work of over fifteen Slovenian poets into English, ranging from seminal work by the nineteenth-century luminary Francè Prešeren to recent popular children’s songs.
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