High Ride in the Streets - Gregor Podlogar

sun rays have ripped open the clouds' bellies
the rain has stopped tourists are exhausted
the machinery in my head takes on the beat
of the great empire there's something out there
where another life begins without the echo
of excavations the world around me has unfolded like Spring
in the central core of the old continent a postcard from Columbia
has reminded me once more that there's another world I have not
yet burnt that Tibetan money from the new one I am not
familiar with the Habsburg myth and why are you asking
I am the twenty-fifth generation this side of the Carpathians
only a hundred years ago my ancestors shared their room
with pigs and other animals but today we proudly
strut the streets and take to the air in metal birds

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Gregor Podlogar (born 1974) Slovenia
Translated by Ana Jelnikar and Stephen Watts
Source: Six Slovenian Poets, ed. Brane Mozetic, Arc Publications, 2006