Derek Walcott

английский

Janko Lozar

словенский

[Our houses are one step from the gutter]

Our houses are one step from the gutter. Plastic curtains
or cheap prints hide what is dark behind windows –
the pedalled sewing machine, the photos, the paper rose
on its doily. The porch rail is lined with red tins.
A man’s passing height is the same size as their doors,
and the doors themselves, usually no wider than coffins,
sometimes have carved in their fretwork little half-moons.
The hills have no echoes. Not the echo of ruins.
Empty lots nod with their palanquins of green.
Any crack in the sidewalk was made by the primal fault
of the first map of the world, its boundaries and powers.
By a pile of red sand, of seeding, abandoned gravel
near a burnt-out lot, a fresh jungle unfurls its green
elephants’ ears of wild yams and dasheen.
One step over the low wall, if you should care to,
recaptures a childhood whose vines fasten your foot.
And this is the lot of all wanderers, this is their fate,
that the more they wander, the more the world grows wide.
So, however far you have travelled, your
steps make more holes and the mesh is multiplied –
or why should you suddenly think of Tomas Venclova,
and why should I care about whatever they did to Heberto
when exiles must make their own maps, when this asphalt
takes you far from the action, past hedges of unaligned flowers?

© by Carl Hanser Verlag München Wien 2001
Из: Mittsommer / Midsummer
München Wien: Carl Hanser Verlag, 2001
ISBN: 3-446-20102-5
Аудиопроизводство: 2001 M.Mechner, literaturWERKstatt berlin

[Naše hiše so korak stran od obcestnega jarka]

Naše hiše so korak stran od obcestnega jarka. Plastične zavese
ali ceneni časopisi očem prikrivajo tisto, kar je temnega za okni –
nožni šivalni stroj, fotografije, papirnata vrtnica
na prtičku. Ograja na verandi je ovešena z rdečimi pločevinkami.
Mimoidoča višina moškega je enake velikosti kot njihova vrata,
in v sama vrata, običajno nič širša od krste,
so včasih vrezani majhni polmeseci.
Hribi nimajo odmevov. Ne odmev ruševin.
Prazna zemljišča kimajo s palankini zelene.
Sleherna razpoka na pločniku je tu zaradi prvobitne napake
prvega zemljevida sveta, njegovih meja in sil.
Ob kupu rdečega peska, setvine, opuščen gramoz
blizu zgorele parcele, sveža džungla razvije svoja zelena
slonja ušesa divje batate in kačnika.
En korak čez nizek zid, če se vam ljubi,
prikliče v spomin otroštvo, čigar ovijalke se oprimejo nog.
In to je večina vseh klatežev, to je njihova usoda,
da bolj ko se klatijo, širši postaja svet.
Tako da naj si potoval še tako daleč, tvoji
koraki naredijo več lukenj in zanke se množijo –
oziroma zakaj bi se moral nenadoma spomniti Tomasa Venclove,
in zakaj naj bi me skrbelo, kaj so naredili Hebertu,
ko pa morajo izgnanci risati svoje zemljevide, ko pa te ta asfalt
odnese daleč stran od dejanja, mimo živih meja razmetanih rož?

Iz nemščine prevedel Janko Lozar