Slovenia 0-1 England

Uros Zupan (1963- ; trans. Ana Jelnikar)



Returning Home

Dusty roads, a voice that rises from a throat
and dissolves in the desert, the smell of a polished parquet floor
on one September morning, dialogues of light
and shadows we have forgotten to transcribe, a possibility

to be in some other place, though our feet are
indisputably impressed in this asphalt, and time
rebounds like quicksilver in our veins. In all
this we seek shelter, returning home.

The sky above our heads is ruffled, and down below,
somewhere on the right, the calm ripple of the river
never stepped into twice is heard. Somewhere,
for someone, it is so, always so. At home,

things pushed aside into silence await us. And at times
it seems some forgotten bird has fluttered
out of the morning mist, setting off
for the borders of expectation, for life puts itself together

now, in the absence of a face observing its reflection in the glass,
in the absence of a hand sliding down the cheeks for
the hundredth time this evening to learn of the age
of one patiently awaiting us. Calmly the steps echo,

slithering along the moist walls of the night, calmly that
dark river runs, which will turn into silver in the morning,
and calmly the distance which memory may yet measure
grows longer and longer, like these steps, slowly winding

into the arms of an uncertain future.


John Stammers (1954- )



¿Que pasa?

There is a little of everything in everything
Anaximander

Lavish rays of the flagrant sun cascade on the esplanade
or coruscate the way H2SO4 does spilt on a lab floor.
A grey (or ash) acacia sweeps its sombrero from its head
making like a ranchero on a talcum-white caballo
that clops along in the shower of solar-wind particles
whose slavish job it is to bombard the Earth from space today –
Hombre, esta muy bueno aqui, muy, muy bueno.

The terracotta soil of the area merely expresses
the downright red of an Andalusian hemipode,
its feathers drenched in henna,
or a post-nuptial bedsheet doused in chicken blood
that threatens a reprise
of the madness aria from Lucia de Lammermoor –
you know the one she comes out
with it all spattered down her front
and gets into Eduardo! Eduardo! and all that,
Eduardo! Eduardo! and all that.
You would rend the nails from your fingers
with the beauty of it, those exquisite trills
embedded in gothic death.
It’s that even here,
here in the epicentre of a chilli enchilada,
the ice cubes in the glass hold out against it,
little visitants of the cold realms.