PAVOL JANIK

PAVOL JANIK

Chrysanthematika

Inside the typewriter

and on the printer’s block

poems have died

in which spurs have clinked

of the disobedience and the pride

of the blue blood

of the noble ink.

A Dream From The Glass

In the fading lustre

of the hotel Alcron, Prague

I watch

as you sleep at the bottom of a mirror.

a jasmine breeze

disseminates your visions,

it hums your mute desires.

All the radio stations

broadcast the beating of your heart.

In the receiver

of every telephone

your breath is heard.

On every television channel

they show

your sleeping face

live in the mirror of the hotel Alcron.

I am the television camera

of your glass sleep.

Your crystal dreams are dreamt by me.

Sparkling you drizzle on me.

Your naked ness is veiled

in a mist of hotel curtains

which in vain I try to blow away

with my last breath before I sleep.

It’s late.

Flying lovers

gently switch off

the great night city.

A dancing couple

of violet neon

twinkles drowsily

in the dark blue sky.

Diplomats

tailored in satin

and surfeited with soap bubbles

leave opera performances,

concert halls and receptions

and in limousines

constructed of air,

darkness and glittering stars

fly away like comets

to their state beds

in a twilight of ambassadors.

Garden parties finish.

The blossoming trees

drink from fountains.

In the squares

without shame or movement

statues from different eras,

genres and sizes

make love.

Tireless taxis, ambulances

and police vehicles

quietly sink to the river bed

while the frightened fish

turn on their alarm sirens

and switch on coloured beacons

of anxiety.

In the empty streets

delayed pleasure boats fly

full of trembling lights

and moor themselves

in the last empty shop windows.

It’s late.

From the highest floors of the heavens

leisurely and at length

flashing lanterns fall.

Phosphorescence shines

on the wings of night butterflies.

It sounds

as if a thousand solitary towers

breathed

the brassy midnight air.

So much would I like

to dream you, too.

The Last Four Bars Of Silence

It’s getting dark in the revues,

in the carmined eyes of the dancers,

in the centre of the cleavage

of a monumental bosom

and in the snowfall of ostrich feathers.

It’s getting brighter deep within wood,

in flower pots

and botanical gardens.

The lights go off in the last windows

of ministerial offices

made of cardboard, telephone lines

and salary cheques.

The wind delivers

autumn leaves

of strictly secret material

into the unvetted hands

of nightwalkers.

Sensitive lovers

are on guard in the parks

armed to their teeth

with rapid firing sentiments -

calibre forty-five.

And it always dawns.

Over the pages of newspapers

the moulds of white hot dreams hiss

on contact with the icy air.

Mutes enthusiastically play

their leading role

and the powerless director

with his head in his hands

and bust fuses in his head

repeats to the point of madness

the last four bars of silence.

PAVOL JANIK

Mgr. art. PAVOL JANIK, 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 Slovak Writers’ Society (1998–2003, 2007–2013), Editor-in-Chief of the Slovak literary weekly 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). Ambassador of the Worldwide Peace Organization (Organizacion Para la Paz Mundial) in Slovakia (from 2018). Member of the Board of the International Writers Association (IWA BOGDANI) (from 2019). 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, Argentina, Bangladesh, Belarus, Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Canada, Chile, Croatia, the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Hungary, India, Israel, Italy, Jordan, Kosovo, Macedonia, Mexico, Moldova, Nepal, Pakistan, Poland,  the People's Republic of China, the Republic of China (Taiwan), Romania, the Russian Federation, Serbia, South Korea, Spain, Syria, Turkey, Ukraine, United Kingdom, the United States of America and Venezuela.