Puddles - Uroš Zupan

At 8.10 in the morning I was exactly
43 years old. Long blots of sunlight
are broken off by sharpened shadows. The clouds

are crammed, grey pancakes flattened
by a rolling pin which don't move anywhere.
The leaves in the trees gently tremble
 

as if they started to feel cold; they don't know
it's my birthday. Steel birds whizz
past the apartment building and bow down on
 

the nearby runway; they don't know it's
my birthday. My son imitates a familiar
sleeping position. He's breathing as if
 

he wasn't breathing and doesn't know it's my birthday.
Bugs Bunny has lain motionless for two days
in the bed frame and doesn't know
 

it's my birthday. I will be congratulated by
about ten people. Some sooner. Some

later. For now, I just feel
 

well-rested and extremely unambitious,
though I'm writing something that could be
a poem. On this day in 1744, Herder was
 

born. On this day in 1900, Nietzsche
died. I don't know what to think of that
so will think nothing.
 

The weather report isn't coming true. Everything
is bright and grey-blue and blue
and doesn't know it's my birthday.
 

Puddles are evaporating as if they rode
a quick and invisible elevator into the sky.

---

Uroš Zupan (born 1963) Slovenia
Translated by Barbara Jurša
Source: Uroš Zupan Selected Poems, Translated by Barbara Jurša, Lud Literatura, 2014