PAVOL JANIK

PAVOL JANIK

I AM CRYING YOU, MORNING

Behind the horizon the light is spraying.

The sky tremble’s like a tear.

The winged summer wilts.

Through the algae’s a lonesome dew slides.

Trees hold empty nests in their hands.

I quietly sing birds psalms.

In the empty night, empty star is falling.

Empty gaze of water is still cloudy.

I read an exclamation of silence

and drink the morning blood stream aloud.

The morning is taking deep breaths.

With its soft palms of the hands,

the haze crumbles poems.

Heart’s beating is not quieter.

Unbelievable sobs, like as if it was dead.

(1975)

TRANSLATED INTO ENGLISH BY SMILJANA PIKSIADES

THE CONCERT

Do not be afraid of sudden outcries of the orchestra!

That does not mean the conductor

has seen my hand on your knee.

Allow a kiss.

Know, that your sex outrages you only as much,

as the music is anxious about the applause.

(1981)

TRANSLATED INTO ENGLISH BY PAVOL JANIK JUNIOR

ON THE LINE MAN

WOMAN AND BACK

You escape from me

like gas.

With astonishment I watch

how with a single scrawl of your legs

you ignite your silk dress.

With such blinding nakedness you pre-empt sky-blue flame.

Blazingly ablaze and perhaps wholly otherwise

I address a fire

which you will no longer damp down.

That time I wanted to declare at least what was essential

to all chance passers-by,

to all chance passing aircraft.

So under such circumstances who wouldn’t have spoilt it?

(1981)

TRANSLATED INTO ENGLISH BY JAMES SUTHERLAND SMITH

PAVOL JANIK

PAVOL JANIK Mgr. art., PhD., (magister artis et philosophiae doctor) was born in 1956 in Bratislava, where he also studied film and television dramaturgy and scriptwriting at the Drama Faculty of the Academy of Performing Arts (VSMU). He has worked at the Ministry of Culture (1983–1987), in the media and in advertising. President of the Slovak Writers’ Society (2003–2007), Secretary-General of the SWS (1998–2003, 2007–2013), Editor-in-Chief of the literary weekly of the SWS Literarny tyzdennik (2010–2013). Honorary Member of the Union of Czech Writers (from 2000), Member of the Editorial Board of the weekly of the UCW Obrys-Kmen (2004–2014), Member of the Editorial Board of the weekly of the UCW Literatura – Umeni – Kultura (from 2014). Member of the Writers Club International (from 2004). Member of the Poetas del Mundo (from 2015). Member of the World Poets Society (from 2016). Director of the Writers Capital International Foundation for Slovakia and the Czech Republic (2016–2017). Chief Representative of the World Nation Writers’ Union in Slovakia (from 2016). He has received a number of awards for his literary and advertising work both in his own country and abroad. This virtuoso of Slovak literature, Pavol Janik, is a poet, dramatist, prose writer, translator, publicist and copywriter. His literary activities focus mainly on poetry. Even his first book of poems Unconfirmed Reports (1981) attracted the attention of the leading authorities in Slovak literary circles. He presented himself as a plain-spoken poet with a spontaneous manner of poetic expression and an inclination for irony directed not only at others, but also at himself. This style has become typical of all his work, which in spite of its critical character has also acquired a humorous, even bizarre dimension. His manner of expression is becoming terse to the point of being aphoristic. It is thus perfectly natural that Pavol Janik's literary interests should come to embrace aphorisms founded on a shift of meaning in the form of puns. In his work he is gradually raising some very disturbing questions and pointing to serious problems concerning the further development of humankind, while all the time widening his range of themes and styles. Literary experts liken Janik's poetic virtuosity to that in the work of Miroslav Valek, while in the opinion of the Russian poet, translator and literary critic, Natalia Shvedova, Valek is more profound and Janik more inventive. He has translated in poetic form several collections of poetry and written works of drama with elements of the style of the Theatre of the Absurd.  Pavol Janik’s literary works have been published not only in Slovakia, but also in Albania, Belarus, Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Canada, Chile, Croatia, the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Hungary, India, Israel, Italy, Jordan, Kosovo, Macedonia, Nepal, the Republic of China (Taiwan), Poland, Romania, the Russian Federation, Serbia, South Korea, Spain, Syria, Turkey, Ukraine, United Kingdom, the United States of America and Venezuela.