Gregor Strniša (1930-1987)
THERE WAS A TIGER HERE    

I
A bright spring rain fell the day through,
the branches drip, the sand in the lanes is damp yet,
the sky has cleared, slowly you go through the park,
the sun of evening haunts it, apparition-like.

In the illumined peak of the dark tree,
a blackbird sings and sings. The evening’s very quiet,
the sunlight turns wine red,  
and on the lawn shimmers a bronze monument.

Just then you find, in the wet ground before you,
the wide and clear and deep impressions.
The park is big, sun-striped, and full of shadows.
You start, go on, but  know: a tiger came this way.

II

You still remember well the day
when first you saw the tiger’s trail.
You had just woken and there it was.
Morning was like evening, full of shadows.

That was oh so long ago.
The night of that morning you lay alert in the dark,
then fell into a mazy sleep, like gazing out a window
and beyond it softly snows and will not stop.

You live as if not much had changed, really.
Soon after that morning, autumn came,
then we had the long, damp winter,
and wet snow covered a dark city.

III

You sit, elbows on table, you look out the window.
It is late afternoon, soon to be dusk.
Not a sound will come into the room now.
You think how outside the winter day is fading.

You see just a piece of the sky and a roof. It is red.
Likely the snow slid from it in the noontime sun.
In the last of light, the chimney casts a feeble shadow.
Evening will be leadblue, you think, and a little foggy.

You go to the window. A woman in white walks in the street.
Across the way a child plays in the sand.
A summer day flickers in the darkling trees.
Like a great, shimmering cloud, fades the summer day.

IV

Maybe not much has changed, at all.
Only in rooms where once you were already,
you fail to find a favorite picture on a wall,
now there’s only a pale rectangle there.

More and more often on your familiar routes,
tall, dusty horsemen cross your path.
Places you walked in day after day,
bronze, heavy monuments suddenly occupy.

And sometimes, entering a familiar house,
you find yourself in cellars stale and squat.
They were not there before, and huge snarling dogs
are tearing at their chains outside in the gardens.

V

So you live, you’re always off to distant places,
down foggy seas, up snowy mountain ranges,
you see so many new, so many foreign cities,
in whose small, quiet squares you love to sit.

There on the smooth pavement, from time to time,
Dark, broad stripes stand out in the slanting sun.
You find a stone, you weigh it in your palm,
you murmur absently, “There was a tiger here.”

But him himself you haven’t met yet.
Whomever the tiger looks at soon dies.
Always he pads before you through summer’s dark door,
Through foggy rooms under decembered skies.
(translated from the Slovenian by Tom Ložar)