Franci Zagorichnik
STALIN
A Chanson for Jana Kvas
On the edge of forgetting
the giant
somebody else or someone imminent
walks amidst all the annoying creatures
like among the ants from the elder
on their yummy antsy pasturage –
up the hand and through the sleeve
so you can hardly shake away
quick bites and urgent strivings,
hopeless panic, that dreadful
militarity of the subspecies.
But who knows –
maybe some of them would even outlive
this superior race!
Come on, give us a break!
They are practically asking to be smashed
or blown away eventually
I shift from one foot to another in my mind –
up here you cannot see the top so high –
but I do shake my head
behind the windowpane of this here
Bled-Rogashka slastína bus route.
Has anybody seen, anticipated
what goes on here inside the dark
of the cerebral spark?
Somewhere through Celeia
the Stalin bar (in the Cyrillic alphabet).
Lesser evil – Hitler
precautionary unallowed –
loudly forbidden;
oh the sagacity! – bar none!
The ones of the right colors – they are
magnificent – magnificently
criminal. But he is almost one of us!
Oh let them busy antsy ants
fill all the municipal sacs –
why, it's their only skill.
Try, you just try the bar
At Adolph's, Coffee-bar Benito!
You couldn't have a Tito pub either
– because you don't want to offend
Celeian Asians or Europeans
or whatever they may be.
Although one never knows for sure
who hunts for all that's left
in that scraped old beggar's bag –
on the shaky edge of reality
unworthy of remembering.
5th July 1995
__________________
»Separated« (posthumous) opinion of the poet Franci Zagorichnik about the naming of a »Stalin« bar in Celje; »You couldn't have a Tito pub either« – prophetic according to the symptomatic »constitutional problem« with Titova street in Ljubljana in 2011. (Editor's note)
Translated from Slovenian by Matej Krajnc