Milcak Peter

MILČÁK Peter /SK

Peter Milčák (1966) – a poet, editor and translator. He has published two collections of poetry Záprah pred zimou (1989) and Prípravná čiara 57/Preparation Line 57 (2005). In 1991 he set up his own publishing house, Modrý Peter, which mainly concentrates on publishing original Slovak poetry. He has edited and published anthologies of contemporary Slovak poetry in English (Not Waiting for Miracles, 1993), in German (Blauer Berg mit Höhle, 1994), in French (Les Jeux Charmants de l´Aristocratie, 1996) and in Polish (Pisanie, 2006) as well as, in conjunction with the British publishers Bloodaxe Books, a selection of the poems of Miroslav Válek (The Ground Beneath Our Feet, 1996). He has translated and published selected poems by Matthew Sweeney (1998) and Kenneth Patchen (2006). From 1999 to 2002 he lived in Mississauga, Canada, where through the Modry Peter Publishers, he published selections from the works of the poets Ivan Štrpka, Iztok Osojnik, Jan Skácel, Ján Buzássy as part of an edition of Contemporary European Poetry. Peter Milčák currently works at the University of Warsaw, Poland, where he gives seminars on the Slovak language and Slovak literature.
What is
From what is
to that
which looks like
what is.

From what any wind
will carry off effortlessly,
from the essence of a bird, its song,
to that which
makes it
unbearably heavy
to its plumage.

What isn’t
makes me free and happy,
a cruel fiction,
not lurking in wait
for its opportunity. 


Honey Well
It is not called
by the name it should
have been called, but
the agreement stands,
because no name
is worse than
a curse, non-existence
in being, because
not being named is
an eternity
for which no one -
absolutely no one
cares.


Sleep
When it snows at night, the sky
is a grainy screen.
The frost tests what is
still alive even though
it, too, is only here out of mercy.
A freed cone falls
giddily down on its  only
journey to earth which rises
closer to it all the time.

Just as described in the manual,
a blackbird’s eye opens
in the landscape but its movement
is shaded by an enormous snowflake.
A motionless fox in a snowdrift
vainly looks for a way out.
Snow warms all those
voluntarily lying down
for their winter sleep.


How
How to come to terms with the gift
of decline, meanwhile watch
the grass come up with repeated
indifference, how to ransom unfettered
joy from the hands of a man drifting ever further
from himself, how to stand
at the preparation line without the trembling
which only reflects a mind
of welcoming emptiness, always and suddenly
there, curled up and shivering,
needing at the right moment to be hugged, comforted,
wrapped in a warm blanket and lovingly left
to go on considering how.


In Their Place
How beautiful we are
in the mirrors of transience,
how noble and pure.

Why, the mirrors
are in their place.
The dark woods,
too dark to appear in
the picture.
A clear sky, so celestially clear
we cannot even glimpse it.
Butterfly, butterfly flying so
fast that behind it
only a trace
of sound remains.

And so, only we, unspeakably
happy,
steady the surface
and from our eyes shines
eternity.


The Long Way There
The long way there has
no way back, that’s why it’s long,
that’s why it’s only
there.

There is always one step
ahead, like a camel to
a Bedouin, like home
to the homesick.

There is always one step
ahead and is carrying
back in its little locked
suitcase.


Do angličtiny preložil autor a Jonathan Gresty.