PAVOL JANIK

 

PAVOL JANIK

 

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.

 

Translated into English by Pavol Janik Junior

 

New York

 

In a horizontal mirror

of the spreading bay

the points of the angular city

are piercing the starry sky.

 

In the glittering sea of lamps

flirtatious sequenced boats

capsize marvellously

at your attractive legs

as they swim in the lower deck

of a brocade evening dress.

 

Suddenly we are lost

like needles in a labyrinth of a tinfoil.

 

Some things we take personally –

stretched limousines,

molting squirrels in the central Park

and the metal body of a dead freedom.

 

It’s getting dark In New York.

 

The glittering darkness lights up.

 

The thousand-armed chandelier of the mega city

writes Einstein’s message about the speed of light

every evening on the gleaming surface of the water.

 

Just before dusk the silver screen

of New York sky is flooded

with hectoliters of Hollywood blood.

 

Where does the empire of glass and marble strive?

Where do the slim rockets of the skyscrapers aim?

 

God is buying a hot dog

at the bottom of a sixty-story street.

 

God is black

and loves the grey color of concrete.

 

Son was born from himself

in a paper box

from the newest sort of a slave.

 

Translated into English by Smiljana Piksiades

 

The Report From The End Of The Cold War

 

How much is the Czechoslovak crown worth here

in the capital of the ugliest women in the world

where the only chance for survivor

is your photograph?

 

An English poet,

who thinks that Bratislava is in Yugoslavia,

but knows that Dubcek lives there,

is only interested if Havel is free.

 

His rhymes, inspired by London

and by other such European cities

written about the size and dimensions of his desk

could as well stayed on his noble table.

 

I am out of my mind

from circus artistry of street saviours

yelling into the microphones

misunderstandings of their own and other fools,

being sad because of simply being.

 

Before midnight, in the hotel

occupied by scrawny poets

and muscular owners of private firearms,

mixture of alcohol, adrenalin and hormones

erupted into never ending yell accompanied by accordion.

 

Tall, Wide and Sharp-eyed Russian soul

blurred by forty degrees heat of Moscow vodka

blaring something close to Vysotsky.

We don't serve to folks from socialist countries here.

Proletarians of all countries, UNTIE!

 

Translated into English by Pavol Janik Junior

 

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, Austria, Bangladesh, Belarus, Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Canada, Chile, Croatia, the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Hungary, India, Israel, Italy, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kosovo, Macedonia, Mexico, Moldova, Nepal, Pakistan, Poland,  the People's Republic of China, the Republic of China (Taiwan), Romania, the Russian Federation, Serbia, Singapore, South Korea, Spain, Syria, Turkey, Ukraine, United Kingdom, the United States of America, Uzbekistan, Venezuela and Vietnam.