Boris A. Novak[1]Boris A. Novak (born in Belgrade in 1953) is a Slovene poet,  playwright, translator, and essayist. He is a Professor at the Department  for Comparative Literature and Literary Theory at the Faculty of Arts of  the University of Ljubljana. Novak was President of the Slovene PEN  (1991-1996) and Chair of the Writers for Peace Committee of International PEN (1994-2000). Novak organized humanitarian help  for refugees from the former Yugoslavia and writers from Sarajevo  which was one of the biggest humanitarian efforts in the history of the world writers’’ organization. From  2002 he served as Vice-president of International PEN. Novak has published many volumes of poetry  including: Still-Life-in-Verses, (1977), Daughter of Memory (1981), Echo (2000), Glowing (2003), Rituals  of Farewell (2005), and LPM: Little Personal Mythology (2007). Novak’s poems have been translated into  many languages and Novak translates French, ancient Provencal, as well as American, English, Italian,  German, and literature written in Dutch and South Slav languages.

 

Alba

Beyond the reach of sleepy dawn
in an unmade bed of half-light, fearful
of morning coming down from white mountains
between us with the sword which will not wait,

we lie, one against the other, still warm,
making a poor pretence to sleep,
while my palm, ever more breathlessly,
seeks to hold the willingness of the skin,

that melts beneath a starry touch.
Every instant takes you farther into the distance.
All that remains with me is your hidden picture.

Through the long but all too short night,
your warm head lies upon my shoulders.
And I hide my tears, my miraculous vulnerability.

Translated by Erica Johnson Debeljak

 

Borders

We gaze at the same full moon … horizons
far away, too far from each other. Mountains
rise between us. A soft, mossy crust
grows over our footsteps. All alone

you crossed all borders and came to a foreign country,
to the homeland of my arms. Dangerously alone
I crawl past the keepers of borders: I travel to the
Northwest, where I am bitterly ashamed

of the screeching of the soul among smooth, horrible walls.
I stand before them, a dark man from the Southeast,
with a conspicuous name, shuddering, as naked as prey.
I cannot escape. Border is destiny.

Now you know: although you cross the border, you don’t erase it.
Rising even higher it will measure your steps, like doubt.
A map is not an illusion. So speak more softly.
Beyond all borders your lips are my home.

Translated by Lili Potpara

 

Your Little Bottles

I like to be with you in the bathroom.
Hundreds of scented bottles smile down
from the shelves: creams, lipsticks, shampoos,
mysterious little bottles that hold the condensed

memory of flowers with names unknown.
You borrow their aroma. In the evenings,
your soft breasts exhale their fragrance
and I rinse away with my lips the scent

from the flowery bottles. Then you paint yourself
anew. You make yourself beautiful for me
again: you blacken your brows so they are like birds

flying above the lakes of your eyes; you redden
your full lips so they are even more full, more perfect …
I know that women like to be alone at the hour

of their mysterious ablutions. But
I am your only witness. I enjoy watching you.

Translated by Erica Johnson Debeljak

 

Your Scent

Your scent wells up from the opulence of milk.
Your scent is milky mild and fresh and thick.
It washes over me like waves from distant rivers,
unseen air, the secrets of soothsayers.

You are dressed in it. Your scent is a robe
that never falls from you. A forest so thick
that even time cannot cut through it. Your scent
connects me to you: it is a delicate bridge.

When your own scent is concealed by the smell of flowers,
fragile and rich, I strip them away from you with tender
embraces. I lie inside of you: final and eternal.

The aroma of two bodies is a measure of happiness …
That is why I don’t wash myself and your scent
steals furtively inside of me, mysteriously enduring,

timeless and placeless, stinging me.
I recognize your beauty and your

unseen trace as the most fatal of all words.
How far away you are. It is all in vain.

Translated by Erica Johnson Debeljak

 

Our One House

We lie, after love, on a wrinkled
bed, intoxicated with the smell
of nearness yet already breathing
distance and we sketch on the last page

of a scribbled notebook: a wide garden,
a big kitchen, dining alcove and a room
flooded from a high window with the light
needed to write. Walls rise up from the

awkward letters, the colors will be bright,
in the bedroom a magnificent double bed,
the same one where we lie now

awake and dreaming and knowing – each
of us knowing but neither of us saying it aloud –
that this will be our one and only home,

our one safe and warm hiding place
in a jealous and lethal world,

this bed, this raft floating through time,
through the unfulfilled light of days…

Enough for love. Enough for death.

Too little for life …

Translated by Erica Johnson Debeljak

 

The Hairclip

You are a prophetess, Ariadne, in the story’s labyrinth:
all day you search for the thread behind the plinth.
After sweet hours of love, golden slumber
vanquishes your weary head. Feather light

curls fall upon your brow. The first shadow
sends a faint trace across your heavy lids.
Your skin, the color of milk, softly breathes.
The murmur of your blood finds its slow reprieve.

And now you ask me to take the clip
from your plaited hair. Your sleepy voice
sounds girlish. Moved by this sign of intimacy,

I carefully unlatch the hairclip so as not to prick you.
Your hair pours out over the pillowcase. Stay
that way. I lie beside you, humbled by the silence.

Translated by Erica Johnson Debeljak

 

Intimate Things

My suitcase is at your place, your travelling bag
at mine. Chaos. You find my socks in the laundry
basket. Your nightgown is my eternal hostage:
it smells of fresh soap…

I often look for a shirt or a pair of pants,
in vain, because they are with you, twelve hundred
kilometers away. I’d like to live life differently,
to focus the world in only one place,

but it doesn’t work: the world is too large. We share
a temporary roof, each with our own suitcase,
reaching out for a new place. Nights are together, days divided …

If we part from each other, let our things
remain as they are, let them turn to
stone:
mine at your place,
and yours at mine …

Translated by Erica Johnson Debeljak