Pavol Janik
Pavol Janik, was born in 1956 in Bratislava, where he also studied film and television dramaturgy and scriptwriting at the Drama Faculty of the Academy of Performing Arts (VSMU). He has worked at the Ministry of Culture (1983-87), in the media and in advertising. President of the Slovak Writers’ Society (2003-07) and the Secretary-General of the SWS (1998-2003, 2007 – ). He has received a number of awards for his literary and advertising work both in his own country and abroad.
KOSOVO
A burning
paper Goethe
prays
in Serb
for four hundred dead children
In Schiller’s stone eye
gleams a tear of mercury
There’s a Gypsy weeping
for a little Romany fairy
at the bottom of the Adriatic
Blood
has an irresistible color
of the bluish dusk of the sky
from which falls
light and glitterings
like a gust of May rain
to fertilize the wounded earth.
FAMILY STUDY
Always when I think of you
dawn breaks above Buenos Aires
and the Atlantic has the inexplicable color of your eyes.
Exotic birds
nest on out TV aerial
until the announcer
has a pearly hairdo
and complete blonde smile.
She claims that eternity has already lasted a whole year.
The weather forecast
announces in her place
a rainbow parrot.
For our wedding route
it wishes us little cloudiness
and success at least as large as the discovery of America
or the record flight of the ostrich from Australia
to the zoological gardens of Europe.
Always when I think of you
dawn breaks above Buenos Aires
and the wind whirls the pamphlets
of all the airlines in the world.
The Atlantic does not admit any other continent.
It’s clear as a stone of precious clarity.
Despite its twinkling depth it resembles a question
which posed passionately by your body.
Children search tirelessly for an answer
till now unwritten in books
and cut out colorful pictures from it.
It happens at home
behind whose windows fireworks blaze every evening.
Always when I think of you
dawn breaks above Buenos Aires.
And today, too, the Atlantic is completely upset.
It’s completely bashful
as its accustomed only to invisible phenomena.
