Translator’s Note
“Traces,” “The Kite” and “Wilderness” are taken from Zdravljenje prednikov (Ancestral Healing), Miriam Drev’s award-winning collection of prose poems. This is poetry distinct in its interlayering of the historical, cultural, metaphysical and personal. Growing up in the former Yugoslavia, Drev was surrounded by family bearing the scars of the Second World War. It is as if she is “holding onto a handful of scraps” and inherited family myths that have haunted her since she was a child. Through deft, laconic and compressed language and imagery, she explores connections, separations, reflections, tragedies and losses, abiding in many places and dimensions at once, past and present of the cosmic and natural world of plants and animals, as she searches for wholeness and understanding with at times razor-sharp talons. In “Traces,” she writes, “In the life you construct, incisions are made, wounds that stay” and in “Wilderness” the presence of an inner realm hidden in daily life that emerges as a snowy owl in her ribs. She creates, in the words of poet Ivan Dobnik, “a very intimate poetical fresco linking perceptivity and reality, a space where everything can be truth or else just a fleeting impression.” Drev paints these and other shadowy landscapes of being revealing with subtlety penetrating insights.
— Barbara Siegel Carlson
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Traces
Perhaps after the last act, the shattered soul is given a planet just for itself. Or one of the moons on its eliptical orbit. It may no longer care for the sweet grass of a meadow, or the trees. Whirling gasses fused into clouds suffice. Maybe just for awhile. Though no one knows how time may perform there.
From inhabiting the body where a third of its days are spent dreaming, traces remain. A feature in an open air theater. A whiff of the neighbor’s flower bed. A forbidden urge.
In the life you construct, incisions are made, wounds that stay.
A Venetian window, an arabesque in its spire. The glint of a golden dome. One glimpses some pagan symbols hidden in frescos. Someone rocking a boat near the shore. A mist creeps in.
From somewhere a tune breaks the silence, and the soul is calmed. Then like a child hearing a lullaby it sinks into sleep.
Little by little, it drops its heavy load. Calls back its essence.
Then once again it becomes its own self.
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The Kite
A kite flies up from the field. With eyes and a mouth set in a smile, seen from below as it turns around. It’s yellow, paper glued to a cross of rods. A gust throws it to the ground.
Love, even the sort that comes swiftly, comes from a place of intent. What follows later is absorbed into the bones. It exists in a palpable form.
The boy takes off running, string unraveling from the spool as the kite flies up from the grass to the air once again.
There is unpredictability as it rises upward, into the wind before clearing the chimneys. After awhile it sails on its way.
When navigating you have to detect how the course changes. Each flight is slightly different, but sometimes the landings are poles apart. I don’t take its plight lightly.
It is important to stay in one piece, even when the force impales you to the ground.
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Wilderness
When I walk among the trees, I disappear. One part of me doesn’t hinder another. I impede no one.
Removed from my usual self, just footsteps. The trees inhale me from my head downwards. Acorns rap at the branches. My lungs diminutive tree crowns, self-evident with each breath.
During the day in the hollow of a tree, an owl huddles into its fan of feathers, sleeping. Before long at nightfall, softly, very softly it darts into the air: mice, shrews, moles are as yet safe in this respect.
As a being I’m still somewhat concealed, that much I know. My daily world—the horizon, dim in the mist or opening in the distance. But come evening all is changed: breath and time and the phenomena of night have a trajectory of their own.
I rarely step into the dark devoid of artificial light, although it calls me. A snowy owl hoots, wide awake in the hollow of my ribs.
Part of the wilderness, my own, would fly above the darkened glade and river, grab its prey. With talons razor-sharp, eyes probing each shrouded shape, wings spread spacious as the sky.
If truth be told, we are never just our everyday self. The one who’s visible and known.
/ / /
Mogoče razrvano jedro duše po izreku zadnje vrstice dobi planet samo zase. Ali eno od lun na eliptičnih orbitah. Morda mu ni več mar miline travnika,dreves. Zadoščajo vrtinci plinov, sprijetih v oblake. Lahko, da začasno. Ampak nihče ne ve, kako se drugje obnaša čas.
Od bivanja v telesu, kjer tretjino dni presanjaš, ostajajo zaznave. Kino predstava pod milim nebom. Razdišanost, ki se vrača z robov sosedinega vrta. Nagonu izrečena prepoved.
V tisto, kar gradiš, so vsekani rezi; so kot rane v strukturi življenja.
Vmes beneško okno z arabesko v konici. Poblisne zlata kupola, pogled ošine freske, polne prikritih poganskih vsebin. V čolnu blizu brega se nekdo zaziba čez premec. Noter prileze megla.
Ko tišino prekine melodija, se duša pomiri. Podobno kot ob uspavanki otrok utone v sen.
S sebe zlagoma otresa dele naložene teže. Prikliče svoj prvotni vzorec.
Potem spet postane vsa svoja.
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S travnika vzleti papirnat zmaj. Na vrhnji strani ima oči in na smeh obrnjena usta, vidne od spodaj, ko se obrača. Rumen je, papir prilepljen na letvičast križ. Sunek vetra ga vrže k tlom.
Ljubezen, celo tista, ki pride naglo, izhaja iz točke namena. Kar sledi pozneje, se zalepi na skelet. Tudi ta je že od prej, neka otipna oblika.
Fant se požene v tek, vrvica se odvije s tulca, zmaj se s trave vnovič dvigne v zrak.
Nepredvidljivost v pridobivanju višine, v vetru, dimnikih na poti. Čez čas enakomerno pluje.
Med krmarjenjem moraš zaznati premike, ko se menja smer. Tudi pristanek je vsakič malo drugačen, včasih v nesorazmerju z letom. Ne podcenjujem bolečine zmaja. Pomembno je ostati v enem kosu, celo če se z vso silo padca zapičiš v tla.
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Ko hodim med drevjem, me ni. En del mene ni v napoto drugemu. Nikomur nisem v napoto.
Odmaknjena od vsakdanje sebe; samo koraki nog. Drevesa me predihavajo od vrha navzdol. Želodi trkajo ob veje. Moja pljuča pomanjšava krošenj, z vsakim dihom samoumevnih.
Nekje v drevesni duplini se v svoja žarkasta peresa podnevi stiska sova, ko spi. Ne bo se še kmalu znočilo, ko bo tiho, tihceno šinila v zrak; miši, rovke, krti so v tem pogledu zdaj varni.
Kot bitje nisem do kraja razkrita, to vem. Poznam svoj dnevni svet: obzorja, motna v megli ali odprta v daljavo. V večernih urah je drugače: dih in čas in pojave teme se gibljejo po svoje.
V noč, kjer ni umetnih luči, stopim redkokdaj, čeprav me kliče. Zahuka snežna sova, na lepem budna v votlini med mojimi rebri.
Del divjine, moje lastne, se hoče spreleteti nad črno jaso in nad reko, zgrabiti plen. Kremplji so naostreni v britev, oči pronicajo v pritajene oblike, krila so razprta kot nebo.
V resnici nikdar nismo zgolj naš dnevni jaz. Tisti, ki je viden in poznan.