From Unfinished Sketches of a Revolution

Abstract

from Unfinished Sketches of a Revolution Brane Mozetič (bio) Translated by Barbara Jurša *when i was little, they made us wave little flagsat the president, our school was near celovška street, onthe strategic route from brnik airport to ljubljana. sometimeswe would also wave foreign flags. when he had a guest.now they make us vote. to make it look fair. the newgovernment poses for the cameras. how do they find hopeto believe that there’s still something left to steal. strong windsgust in from the hills, it’s cold and there’s barely any snow.i look through the window at the people who are slowlybeginning to grasp that they’ve been taken for a ride,and don’t understand how this could have happened.it has been flowing for years and years. [End Page 82] *i drag myself through long empty corridors, bleak,my legs and arms ache from my load. on and on into the bigwhite hall, a consecrated entrance to a consecrated country.the line is long, folding back on itself ten times, the wardensstrict, the questions serious; they’re all little policemen of the world.all americans seem like this to me. already in kindergarten,they’re bending over the map of the world, movingtanks, directing rockets. even if i crossed the border everyweek, every week they would photograph me, every week theywould take my fingerprints. where were they lost? there,like empty words of freedom. i’m limping onwards, the eternalpotential enemy, here and there, decades ago and stilltoday. we used to be taught that we need to beconstantly on the alert for the enemy. all we learned isthat we ourselves now vote for them, becominglike americans rising up into the sky and dropping bombs.perhaps one day there will be a mistake and we’ll demolishour own towns. perhaps the earth will open and swallow us.we gather in the streets and protest againstthe war. hypocrites, we who voted for it. [End Page 83] Brane Mozetič Brane Mozetič is a Slovene poet, writer, editor, and translator born in Ljubljana in 1958. He studied comparative literature and literary theory at the University of Ljubljana and graduated in 1983. He works as the editor of the literary collections Aleph and Lambda at the Centre for Slovenian Literature. In 2003, he won the Jenko Award for his poetry collection Banalije (Banalities). Copyright © 2019 University of Hawai‘i Press