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Neža Vilhelm lives in Slovenia. She is a professor of classical languages and a freelance translator from German and English, specialising in subtitle translations for film festivals. She prepares presentations of foreign authors for radio and various Slovenian publications. She dotes on her dachshund, Mimi.

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Neža Vilhelm:  Poems from Sotto Voce
(translated from the Slovenian by the author, with Sarah Lawson)

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BREADCRUMBS

II
Call me up anytime. I will.
I call on a certain occasion. In vain.
All the words are in vain, too.

III
I feel people’s vibes. Often too strongly.
It exhausts me. I exhaust myself.
I have to fill myself with peace and silence.

V
I don’t believe people.
I don’t believe myself.
I don’t believe feelings.
Not mine, not anybody else’s.
Do you believe me?

PLEASURE

IV
Mimi, 19 months.
Rabbit dachshund.
She won’t grow any more.

I admire her courage,
she is not scared of anyone,
anything.

If something shocks her,
she stops,
waits, looks.

If she sees a stranger,
she stops,
waits, looks.

With unerring accuracy
she knows who is who,
to whom she can come and to whom she’d rather not.

With unerring accuracy
she says what she wants,
right now.

She is tiny,
her heart is big,
her soul pure.

She is always now,
she is always here,
she always is.

VIII
Town by the sea.
I sit on the stairs in front of the house.
Sun, wind, scent of salt.

Groups of tourists and schoolchildren.
Flocks of pigeons.
And Mimi, who chases them.

Statue of devillishly good musician.
I want to capture the staccato of the language
and transfer it into mine.

SEARCHING

IV
If only I could always be here,
In my heart, in my thoughts.

Even when my body is alone,
My soul mustn’t be afraid,
My mind mustn’t wander,
And my heart mustn’t pound.

If only I could always trust
That all will be well,
That I will manage,
That nothing will go wrong,
And even if something does go wrong,
It won’t.

V
I am well.
The biggest lie in the universe,
but useful.
It stops annoying questions.

Sarah Lawson, an American-born Londoner, has poetry collections with Loxwood-Stoneleigh and Hearing Eye. She has translated Jacques Prévert (1900-77) and Christine de Pisan (1364-1430?), among others, from French and Luis Cernuda and Manuel Ulacia from Spanish. http://www.sarah-lawson.com

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