No matter how carefully you cut into the belly of this wonderful silver fish and clean the entrails, wipe the dust from the shelves, and place fragile objects somewhere high, safety will not save you from fear. Misery doesn't ensure a good poem. The closeness of death only makes you more alone. Filled with joy, like an aquarium with spawning fish, we watch the ducks follow one another with their shovel-like feet, one two one two in a line. There is an order in everything, some feathery lightness.
By Jana Purtle Srdić
Translated by Barbara Jurša
From ANYTHING COULD HAPPEN
by Jana Purtle Srdić
Translated from the Slovene by Barbara Jurša
Published by Periscope / A Midsummer Night’s Press (2014)
Jana Purtle Srdić is a poet, att film reviewer, and translator of poetry who lives in Ljubljana, where she works as a visual art producer. She has published three collections of poems to date, and also translates poetry from English, Russian, and Serbian, including collections by Robert Hass, Sapphire, Ana Ristović, and other authors.
Barbara Jurša received a B.A. in English Language and Comparative Literature from the University of Ljubljana, and is currently finishing her PhD in Literary Studies. To date, she has worked as a literary critic, a journalist, an online editor, a translator and an English teacher. Her poetry has been published in a number of Slovenian literary magazines (Poetikon, Dialogi, Sodobnost, Nova revija, Apokalipsa), and her first book of poetry (Leta v oklepaju) was published in 2014.
Photo by Lisa Kalloo
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Read previous poems from Poetry Travels:
THE WELL by Maarja Pärtna, translated by Jayde Will
THE SHADOW by Pentti Saarikoski, translated by Emily Jeremiah and Fleur Jeremiah
A FAREWELL TO MY DEAD CLASS by Irit Amiel, translated by Anna Blasiak and Marta Dziurosz
THE GIRLS IN BERGEN-BELSEN by Nora Gomringer, translated by Annie Rutherford
DECEMBER, by Jaume Subirana, translated by Christopher Whyte
ROSE RED, by Ulrike Almut Sandig, translated by Karen Leeder
*** (I D[R]IPPED MY PEN…) by Mario Martín Gijón, translated by Terence Dooley
WHAT COMES by Magda Cârneci, translated by Adam J. Sorkin and Mădălina Bănucu
TRANSLATION by Justyna Bargielska, translated by Maria Jastrzębska
*** (MY EYES, DENSE NIGHT…) by Gëzim Hajdari, translated by Ian Seed