Choosing the Key

From the Cello in the Sun, 2001 (Čelo na soncu, Ljubljana: Študentska založba, 2001)
Translated by Janko Lozar

Lucija Stupica

Life Perspective
Choosing the Key
Green Galleries
Still Life
Dialogue
In the Heart of the Day
Enchanting
I Wish Someone Dedicated Me a Poem

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Life Perspective

A test tells me that I will die
in 2055, eighty-four years old,
most probably of cancer.
There are data I thrust into the closet
among old toys to play at clowns.
A tinge of irony is in nostalgic memory
of childhood, and the big eyes in the mirror
are a reflection of curiosity, which remains.
While other sleep, I sit in the dark
nursing an image I created as a child:
how nice it will be to grow up some day!

Then I restore innumerable halls. In them,
there arise forgotten children, some learning to talk,
others to think, still others to walk ...
And it isn’t true that I didn’t care for you,
I gave you a room, though empty,
which you organized the way you like,
I gave you a little space, little enough
to close the rifts of the door,
or open them up, telling silence
to cover your eyes.
And it isn’t true I didn’t love you as a child –
I just didn’t know how
to accept this love.