Blackbird

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Flight v22n2

Poetry

I am the people’s point of view

Tomaž Šalamun

Brian Henry (translator)

I am the people’s point of view, a cow
a tropical wind, I sleep beneath the surface
I am the aristocratic cannibal, I eat form
I drum on cooks’ white caps

I drum on their aprons, I am the green integration
water flows into the lazaretto, ice forms on boots from the moisture
little drums, elementary forces, little snouts
the dog snarls in pictures

the temperature battered, the door, I tossed a gold ring
into boiling oatmeal, autumn is here
fate has the same circle, pedestrians stink
new snow falls on the snowballs

the grasses are soaked in coats of scarlet red
the air swirls, the thicket swirls over the desert
carpets are beaten, color gets up with sunrise
more people will see me, with sunrise I become morning

Contributor's Notes

Translated from the Slovenian by Brian Henry.

Photo of Brian Henry.

Brian Henry

Brian Henry is the author of eleven books of poetry, most recently Permanent State (Threadsuns, 2020), and the prose book Things Are Completely Simple: Poetry and Translation (Parlor, 2022). His translation of Tomaž Šalamun’s Kiss the Eyes of Peace: Selected Poems 1964-2014 is forthcoming from Milkweed Editions in 2024. He also has translated Aleš Debeljak’s Smugglers (BOA Editions, 2015) and six books by Aleš Šteger, most recently Burning Tongues: New and Selected Poems (Bloodaxe, 2022). He is the recipient of numerous awards, including two National Endowment for the Arts fellowships, a grant from the Howard Foundation, the Best Translated Book Award in poetry (2011), and the Alice Fay di Castagnola Award (2003).

Nonfiction

  • David Wojahn in Conversation with Brian Henry on his Tomaž Šalamun Translations

    • Poetry

  • Monstrum (Lat.) from the Verb Monstrare

  • I am the people’s point of view

  • Golem

    • Photo of Tomaz Salamun.

    Tomaž Šalamun

    Tomaž Šalamun (1941-2014) published fifty-two books of poetry in his native Slovenian. His poetry has been translated into over twenty-five languages and received numerous awards, including the European Prize for Poetry, the Jenko Prize, the Mladost Prize, and the Prešeren Prize. In the 1990s, he served for several years as the Cultural Attaché for the Slovenian Embassy in New York, and later held visiting professorships at various universities in the United States. Kiss the Eyes of Peace: Selected Poems 1964-2014 is forthcoming from Milkweed Editions in 2024.

    Poetry

  • Monstrum (Lat.) from the Verb Monstrare

  • I am the people’s point of view

  • Golem