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BEST OF SREČKO KOSOVEL'S WORKS TRANSLATED BY LESLEY ZORE
The majority of the works present were written in 1925 and translated in 2021.
This book (With the exception of the first poem, which I've held onto for some time now) was written in a single day. It is a Slovenian-to-English translation of the best of Kosovel's work.
Everything is an ecstasy, an ecstasy of death!
Golden towers of the Occident Europea,
cupolas white — (everything, an ecstasy!) —
everything sinks in a boiling, red sea;
sun sets and in there dazing
is the thousand times dead human of Europe.
— Everything is an ecstasy, an ecstasy of death. —
Graceful, oh graceful death of Europea;
like a luxurious gilded queen
she'll lay in a coffin of darkened centuries,
quietly moribund, as though she was shutting
the old royal glorious eyes.
— Everything is an ecstasy, an ecstasy of death. —
Oh, from an overcast of a sundown (last
messenger announcing Light!)
blood swirls in my whacked heart,
oh, there is a scarcity of water in Europe
and we, people, drink blood,
blood of sugary clouds of yesterday evening.
— Everything is an ecstasy, an ecstasy of death. —
Barely born, already smoldering in the inferno of the evening,
all oceans are red, all oceans
of ichor, all lochs, and water is scarce;
no water to lavate guilt away,
for this human to expunge their heart,
no water - to extinguish
thirst for a silent, green morning flora.
And everything is a sunset and there will be no first light,
until we all die, who carry
the guilt of their deaths,
to the last one...
Oh, into this scenery, this scenery green
young green scenery, even in this,
evening sun, you will shine
with blazing rays? This one as well?
Sea floods green fields,
sea of an evening burning blood,
And there'll be no salvation,
until I and you fall,
until I and all of us fall,
until we shatter under the weight of red blood.
With golden rays, the sun shines
at us, corpses of Europe.
Ah, our lives are like a path,
enclosed, thight, lacking distance;
chests stabbed with desire,
negativist totality.
A green circlet is freezing
on a friend's grave.
Midnight raids…
Workshop - Pantheon.
When does the Intercity leave for Ljubljana?
Silvery fumes track and regroup,
cerulean mountains in front.
Art is a progressive,
cultural factor!
Freezing cold arrives in my heart.
Airplanes widen the horizon,
raising the cosmic awareness.
Love promotes the spirit.
Psychology of awareness.
Spirit, Soul, Reason.
Modern lyrics are falling apart.
2000 meters high up
perspective is a nought.
Autumn breeze on the sea.
Through nullness
into a red chaos.
Cosmic experience:
Shall you follow the silver autumn roads,
you can only experience cosmosness.
Darkening forests.
The century of automatization.
The Sky is not a place for metaphysics,
but is a space.
Up there in the attic hunger be my comrade,
be my unsweat bread.
Autumn of the white balconies.
Genius = spirit + reason.
Dark, cold night of autumn.
The wind of this autumn…
Dynamists.
The air is freshened by rain
of the Secretive Moonlight
of September Karst.
Order numeral 35.
Incidentally we see,
how the evening red down
endangers The Process.
Thus we enclose the evening
red dawn regularly,
when it rises,
through the Black Sea.
The golden spelutcher of a graveyard
the red down lights,
shining.
A lonely horse marches
the fields.
Wizards of Down.
The horse and its melancholy.
My black ink-pot is going for a walk.
In a tunic, that is.
Much like some fog…
All lands gazing, blind.
On hay a melancholic kitten lies.
Meowing on its golden viola!
Da, Da, Da.
A A A
A A A
A wardrobe with red panes.
Boredness sleeping by the corner.
Automobiles are a sensation.
Cosmic breath: an earthquake.
On a shining dawn,
the red ATOM.
Nenapisana moja beseda
odsevATOM
odsev.ATOM
Laugh of the Majesty Dada
riding a wooden horse.
Hi, hi.
Pum.
Gendarmes are people of lowest qualities.
Serfs of their rulers' orderals.
I am a foreigner to this green field.
Cunning as a snake, free as a pigeon.
To live. Exiles plee to live.
To live, humans, appropriately.
Sun hangs in a tower.
GREEN PARLIAMENT
F R O G S
I live in a land of European wildlife.
The symmetry is striking.
Political criminals all set free!
Everything is a negative. I stand by a negative total. Ljubljana. World. Serfdom. Freedom. Crumble! Everything - a negativity. At last negations create positivity, activity.
Celebrating articles.
Portraits.
Holidays.
Work-day:
in a grayzone of conditions,
in a melting fog of melancholy,
with a saddened steer
at the foggy future:
A confused Slovenian.
Our cells - healty?
As if they lay in some ash.
Come, freeze!
Clear facings,
shine at us!
As wintery silver,
look, time passes:
Our struggle
in sacrifice and labour.
Radić is trading top-hats.
Rather trate hats than humans.
Black horses, standing on white snow,
breeze, breeze, breeze: whereto?
I long for solitude.
Run away, to the fields,
the midst of all snow,
in the silent whiteness of the heart,
sleep, sleep, sleep.
-
To pass away.
The red chimney sings.
Nom, Nom, Nom.
Is, is, is.
No piece.
The modern-most poet breaks forms to arrive at the living of indirect life.
"Good morning."
I have just
finished dreaming.
Winter mornings shine.
Silver sky.
"I am a detective."
(Senior, is it
my fault?)
"You truly are dangerous
and run no business,
a casual poet. -
I shall not
touch you."
(Oh, stand up, The Collective!)
An Investigation.
A confiscation.
Outside sun shines brightly.
Detective does not understand
the poems of mine,
haunting him
on silvery feathers
of a wintery sunilly
WIND.
Henrika!
A cop.
What?
A bat.
Silvery sun,
an admiral.
Jump, monarch, off your chair
and be as I am,
then smile,
sing
with me
into this silvery
sunny wintery time.
YOU ARE NOT A MONARCH.
Art is a danger to the State.
The State is a danger to Arts.
Remain cold, heart!
Cynic.
Transformator.
Orient Express heading to Paris via some viaducts.
Arms - chained.
Cars are taking a run.
I cannot, though.
My thought-electricity
is stuck in Paris.
The smell of medicine
coming from a hospital.
Ew -
spit, curse!
Ew, ew,
ew!
Tired human European
stares blankly into the golden eve,
darker than the
soul they carry.
Karst.
Civilization knows no heart.
Heart knows no civilization.
Extorted struggle.
Evacuation of souls.
Evening burns like a flame.
Death of Europe!
Pitty! Pitty!
Mister Professor,
Do you understand livelihood?
Melancholic accordion.
A session of swimming.
Blue waves.
Shoe size 40.
Istria is dying.
Oceans…
Europe is dying.
Sports, economics, politics.
Nipon counters Russland.
NEW CULTURE.
New culture: humanhood.
New politics: humanhood.
New arts: for a human being.
Europe is arriving at its death-bed.
You treat it with H₂SO₄.
A time of sorrow.
A curtain has exposed a New World.
The buildup of a new Europe.
Electric earthquake.
Feces are gold
and so gold is feces.
Both = 0
0 = infinity
infinity = 0
A B <
1, 2, 3.
Who has no soul,
needs no gold,
who has a soul,
needs no gold.
I, A.
Gold rush. People are having a gold rush. Capitalism. Feces are gold. Gold is feces, for they are used as such. Culture = maid, a maid of Capital.
Y'all, sitting in theaters,
bars and coffee shops
and other commodity centers:
I protest!
In the midst of pain,
unintelligible struggles
I curse you,
a Screw-me son of a Screw-us nation.
I, poor being,
poor and lost,
who searches for saviouring strive
at their home.
I, filled with sorrow,
a Screw-me son of a Screw-us nation.
In the Red Chaos comes
New Humanhood! Ljubljana naps.
Europa dies off in a Red Dawn.
All communications cut.
Oh, they are cableless!
A blind horse.
[Your eyes are shattered as though
they arrive from Italian portraits.]
From brown walls
white towers rise.
A flood.
Europe is stepping into a grave.
We come with a hurricane.
With deadly gasses.
[Your mouth is filled with blood.]
Ljubljana naps.
Conductor on the tram naps.
In the coffee shop "Europe"
they read the Slovenian nation.
Poundings of Billiard Balls.
A Slovenian artist can never cry happy.
What is to celebrate?
The conditions?
Fall!
Fall!
Fall, ya corpse!
Do roses of whiteness come
from your heart, or do you
colour them with some blood?
Fall, fall, fall!
You have no roses.
A serf of mechanics. Transmissions.
Revolutionary ideals die off.
Fall, fall, fall!
Gray stonery. Hide away, moonlight!
A dead land.
Oh, lie, lie, European lie!
Only destruction can kill you!
Only destruction.
Cathedrals and parliaments:
lie, lie, European lie.
Furthermore: The League of Nations is a lie,
lie, lie, European lie.
Collapse, collapse!
All these museums of Faraones,
all the chairs of Arts.
Lie, lie, lie.
Oh, Sophia, oh, cathedral.
Oh, corpses, who shall saviour
Europe. Oh, corpses,
white corpses, you guard the Continent.
Oh, lie, lie, lie.
Collapse, collapse, collapse!
Millions are dying,
though Europe lies.
Collapse. Collapse. Collapse!
A spirit in space.
A flame of thunder is shining through dusk.
Spirit burns in space.
Magic light being shielded.
Green windows of a luminiscated
bullet-train crossing a viaduct.
I myself burn and light my own paths;
blindfolded only feel the current,
they don't observe the light of mine.
Further, all shake, as I do,
as in a deadly gaze.
They do not know that is a shaking
of wings, which ask not to expand,
enlighten as golden fire into the night.
They curse at the police of the Sun,
who sleep through the night
like the petty bourgeoisie randos.
Thus all people sleep through the night
and feel no magic enlightenment,
shining inside me, outside me.
People are the Evacuation of the Spirit.
Anomaly of Psychology.
From all these crisis, a new Power shall emerge,
put the Old Ways before a verge,
humans then willing to encourage
what is insincere, shall shatter!
And a human, aware of the true goal
(oh, the star of their soul shall show them the way)
shall expend their wings in the midst of that wind
and the dead poem shall fall back silent.
No norms, laws; only labour
shall inform the humanity the new paths
leading the heart of the genius,
for the later will be followed by the Über,
and our labour shall give birth to a new Power,
to shatter the System and build new foundations.
Unlatch all museums!
Unlacth all museums!
Europe is haunted by corpses - ideas.
Open museums for nationalism,
for dead ideas.
Unlatch all speluchers!
R. I. P.!
Boston condemns Einstein.
Einstein is blacklisted.
Is relativity dangerous?
In Berlin Chinese students are being arrested.
Are Chinese students dangerous?
The SHS is to get a new government.
France, Spain - Morroco.
Promoter of terrorism.
Gendarme of terrorism.
Big figures live in accordance with their own laws…
People in accordance with paragraphs:
§ X: 14 days of prison.
§ Y: Hanging.
§ Z: Exile.
I've been in prison for 21 years now.
Hanged 10 times.
I'm in eternal exile.
Hey, dear, you'd sorrow?
Though I cannot cry
for I am sharp as steel
issued to shatter a heart.
FRANCE
GERMANY
ITALY
-
FASHION
Do we all believe in the silent
truth that we live?
Why fashion, what is Europeanhood
and humanhood? TO BE.
Truth be with us, and if
we help it rise,
we have thus solved the question
of life. Living a true life.
To play belief.
The Final Communion.
Imaginary humanitarian league
of nations - a league of different
shticks - in Geneva.
Sterile parliamentarism.
Secretive diplomacy.
America. Golden dollars.
The Spirit is superior in its speed to the Orient Express.
Neron in a red murderous coat.
A Human plees: Let me be human!
Mystic lights of Theory.
I live in poverty.
The meaning of Solar Energy.
A cow views its shade in the water,
with no understanding for the image.
Association?
The politics are dying.
Weeping others.
Living limestone.
Like a mole the black train moves
beneath the mountains.
Fronted by a grey window there I see a grey face.
Statics of sadness: melancholy.
Lands.
Worldly events and
REVOLUTIONS
MONARCHS
ARTISTS
But here only thatched roofs thrive.
On the roof somebody taps
a saddened march.
March, human, out of the land of injustice and fraud!
Widened sun takes a walk
like a deadly butcher
marches the village.
That very sun weeps.
The New Age arrives
in Collective Property,
New Age arrives
for the Worker and the Poet.
Death to technically mechanical
trouble!
All problems are problems of humans.
Counter the system of Taylor!
Humanists with purple beards…
New age is due to arrive,
when every worker will be a human,
when every human will be a worker.
New Age is due to arrive
through the Slave Revolt.
My poem is an explosion,
a wild breakup. Disharmony.
My poem does not wanna meet you,
who carefully, willfully,
remains a dead aesthet, museum nerds;
My poem is my face.
Ambitionless Slovenian.
Slovenian - three rubles.
Slovenian.
Slovenian.
This bloody human has now died.
A Slovenian, bounded by Black Forces.
Slave.
Slave the Serf.
Slave the Servant Serf.
Slave the Enslaved Servant Serf.
Slave II.
Slave the Subordinated III.
Servant IV.
Janez Subordinate, Fearful, Ambitious-Desirous.
There are bars on our windows.
White barricades.
Indians knew nothing of Gravity.
Yet, the dynamite explodes
in News Zealand, too.
Senior with Astrakhan!
No arithmetic midpoint
has been found between the Old and the New.
A human may be old and young.
A golden boat appears in the distance.
Laws of Nature = ethics???
You can understand it
with little physics as well.
Hanged corpses swing
by the trees and the poles.
Entry fee: one ruble.
It's raining.
A human talks with the Cosmos.
A Barn shows up before the window.