Miriam Drev
Translated by Barbara Siegel Carlson
PRESENCE
We live on something. We have to live on something. Scarcity is black and white. Strewn with ashes, a mixture of both. I see it not in matter but in smoke. The body physical and plain holds every color, seeking a response in every shade.
It all begins in the optic cup. A eukaryote lives hidden within us. Its single cell billions of years old, barely measurable. Creatures living at the sea bottom would sip in the light, following it to ascend. One wonders how life has been able to cross such distances. Transforming through countless guises, sounding in so many hoarse and silvery clear tones.
We can now only guess how the shift into consciousness came about. Into a dazzling, indomitable spirit. Every now and then a theory arises that from some other place something was transplanted into a humanoid. Like putting a graft of a noble pear tree into a wild one.
Yet this would be a breach of freedom, of primal will.
There is some added presence in us, unbounded. Immeasurable perfection, as some might say at times, hopefully.
PREZENCA
Od nečesa živimo. Od nečesa moramo živeti. Askeza je črno-bela. Posuta s pepelom, ki je zmes obeh. V dimu jo vidim, ne v snovi. Telo premore vse odtenke. Išče jih v odziv; osnoven in preprost usmerja k barvam.
Začetek je v očesni piki. V nas skrito biva evkariont. Enoceličar izpred milijarde let, komaj izmerljiv. V času bivanja na morskem dnu so bitja srkala svetlobo, ji sledila, da bodo laže splavala navzgor. Vprašaš se, kako lahko življenje prečka tolikšne razdalje Dobi nešteto preoblek, tisoč hripavih tonov in srebrno čistih.
Samo ugibamo lahko, še vedno, kako se je zgodil premik v zavest. V bleščeči, neukrotljivi duh. Tu in tam spet vznikne na površje teorija, da je bilo v človečnjaka nekaj presajeno od drugod. Podobno vstavitvi cepiča žlahtne hruške v divjo.
In vendar bi bil to odvzem svobode, prvobitne volje.
V nas je neka dodatna prezenca, neizmerljiva. Neizmerna dovršenost, kot včasih kdo omeni, upajoče.
Miriam Drev is a poet, novelist, literary translator from English and German, as well as a literary critic and publicist born in Ljubljana, Slovenia. In 2022 her sixth book of poems Ancestral Healing was published, receiving the Veronika Award (Veronikina nagrada) in 2023, for the best Slovenian poetry collection of the year. Her poems have been translated into many languages and are published in several anthologies of Slovene poetry as well as in literary magazines abroad. She lives as an independent writer and translator in Ljubljana.
Barbara Siegel Carlson is the author of three poetry collections, most recently What Drifted Here (Cherry Grove 2023). She is currently working with Slovene poet Mirian Drev, translating from her collection Ancestral Healing. Her poetry and translations have appeared in Verse Daily, The Cortland Review and Mid-American Review among others. Her poetry has been nominated for a Pushcart. Carlson is a poetry in translation editor at Solstice and lives in Carver, Massachusetts.