LOOK BACK, LOOK AHEAD

LOOK BACK, LOOK AHEAD: THE SELECTED POEMS: Srečko Kosovel

Translated from the Slovene by Ana Jelnikar and Barbara Siegel Carlson

Ugly Duckling Presse 2010

Srečko Kosovel and Rainer Maria Rilke couldn’t be more different, but they aren’t, they’re brothers. They died the same year. They worked and lived eight miles apart. One in Duino Castle, the other in Karst. “Come, you night-wounded man, so I can kiss your heart,” screamed Srečko Kosovel, the greatest Slovenian poet of the twentieth century. At twenty-two, he immolated himself with the torch of his own poems. To read him is like watching Van Gogh’s last paintings, to stare at Celan’s last drops of life. And yet, he’s the threshold, the triumphal arch to this small nation’s destiny, the eternal poet of total existence.

–Tomaž Šalamun

I would like to walk around
in a small coat of
words.

But hidden underneath should be
a warm, bright world.

What is wealth?
What is luxury?
For me it is this:
a small coat I have,

and this coat is like

no other.