I contribute to the story because no
doubt there will be plenty of theses on who I am.
My life is clear and named
just like my books are named.
I’m also alone, like you, voyeur. And
I also wince if someone
sees me. I’m looking you in the eyes. We both know
the question. Who kills? Who remains? Who
looks? This one, who furiously tears off
his clothes to be innocent, isn’t
this a pretense? Your heart beats because my
blood beats. Wrong. My heart beats because your
blood beats. You have the same right as me,
who is your guardian angel, your monster.
Blackbird
An online journal of literature and the arts
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Contributor's Notes
Translated from the Slovenian by 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).
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.
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