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New York & more…

Poems by Pavol Janik, a virtusoso of Slovak Literature

(translated by James Sutherland Smith)

PAVOL JANIK | VIRTUOSO OF SLOVAK LITERATURE NEW YORK In a horizontal mirror of the straightened bay the points of an angular city stabbing directly into the starry sky. In the glittering sea of lamps flirtatious flitting boats tremble marvelously on your agitated legs swimming in the lower deck of a brocade evening dress. Suddenly we are missing persons like needles in a labyrinth of tinfoil. Some things we take personally – stretch limousines, moulting squirrels in Central Park and the metal body of dead freedom. In New York most of all it’s getting dark. The glittering darkness lights up. The thousand-armed luster of the mega city writes Einstein’s message about the speed of light every evening on the gleaming surface of the water. And again before the dusk the silver screen of the New York sky floods with hectoliters of Hollywood blood. Where does the empire of glass and marble reach? Where do the slim rackets of the skyscrapers aim? God buys a hot dog at the bottom of a sixty-storey street. God is a black and loves the grey color of concrete. His son was born from himself in a paper box from the newest sort of slave. A DICTIONARY OF FOREIGN DREAMS At the beginning it was like a dream. She said: “Have at least one dream with me. You’ll see – it’ll be a dream which you’ve never dreamt about before.” Descend deeper with me, dream from the back, dream retrospectively in a labyrinth of mirrors which leads nowhere. The moment you come to the beginning of nothing you’ll dream an exciting dream. Frame it and hang it in your bedroom. So it will always be before your eyes because a dream which is removed from the eye is removed from the mind in the sense of the ancient laws of human forgetfulness. Dream your own. Dream your dream which is reflected on the surface of a frozen lake. A dream smooth and freezing: Grieving keys, a downcast forest, curved glass. The tributes of mirrors. The rising of the moon in a dream of water. Recoil from the bottom of the mirror’s dream. In the gallery of dreams then you’ll see a live broadcast from childhood fragments of long-forgotten stories. Because our obsolete dreams remain with us. Don’t be in a hurry, dream slowly, completely until you see the crystalline construction of your soul in which dreams glitter. - intentionally and comprehensibly like flame. Perhaps you’ve already noticed that new dreams always decrease. They wane. Soon we’ll light up in the magical dusk of the last dream the despairing cry of a starry night. Pay a toll to the dream’s deliverance from sense. You repeat aloud the intimacies of secret dreams, with the dull gleam of your persistent night eyes you explicate a mysterious speech of darkness. You dream, therefore you exist! UNSENT TELEGRAM Inside me a little bit of a blue Christmas begins. In the hotel room it’s snowing a misty scent – of your endlessly distant perfume. We’re declining bodily while in us the price of night calls rises, waves of private earth tremors and the limits of an ocean of blood on the curve of a lonely coast.

*New York has been translated to 21 languages

PAVOL JANIK | VIRTUOSO OF SLOVAK LITERATURE NEW YORK In a horizontal mirror of the straightened bay the points of an angular city stabbing directly into the starry sky. In the glittering sea of lamps flirtatious flitting boats tremble marvelously on your agitated legs swimming in the lower deck of a brocade evening dress. Suddenly we are missing persons like needles in a labyrinth of tinfoil. Some things we take personally – stretch limousines, moulting squirrels in Central Park and the metal body of dead freedom. In New York most of all it’s getting dark. The glittering darkness lights up. The thousand-armed luster of the mega city writes Einstein’s message about the speed of light every evening on the gleaming surface of the water. And again before the dusk the silver screen of the New York sky floods with hectoliters of Hollywood blood. Where does the empire of glass and marble reach? Where do the slim rackets of the skyscrapers aim? God buys a hot dog at the bottom of a sixty-storey street. God is a black and loves the grey color of concrete. His son was born from himself in a paper box from the newest sort of slave. A DICTIONARY OF FOREIGN DREAMS At the beginning it was like a dream. She said: “Have at least one dream with me. You’ll see – it’ll be a dream which you’ve never dreamt about before.” Descend deeper with me, dream from the back, dream retrospectively in a labyrinth of mirrors which leads nowhere. The moment you come to the beginning of nothing you’ll dream an exciting dream. Frame it and hang it in your bedroom. So it will always be before your eyes because a dream which is removed from the eye is removed from the mind in the sense of the ancient laws of human forgetfulness. Dream your own. Dream your dream which is reflected on the surface of a frozen lake. A dream smooth and freezing: Grieving keys, a downcast forest, curved glass. The tributes of mirrors. The rising of the moon in a dream of water. Recoil from the bottom of the mirror’s dream. In the gallery of dreams then you’ll see a live broadcast from childhood fragments of long-forgotten stories. Because our obsolete dreams remain with us. Don’t be in a hurry, dream slowly, completely until you see the crystalline construction of your soul in which dreams glitter. - intentionally and comprehensibly like flame. Perhaps you’ve already noticed that new dreams always decrease. They wane. Soon we’ll light up in the magical dusk of the last dream the despairing cry of a starry night. Pay a toll to the dream’s deliverance from sense. You repeat aloud the intimacies of secret dreams, with the dull gleam of your persistent night eyes you explicate a mysterious speech of darkness. You dream, therefore you exist! UNSENT TELEGRAM Inside me a little bit of a blue Christmas begins. In the hotel room it’s snowing a misty scent – of your endlessly distant perfume. We’re declining bodily while in us the price of night calls rises, waves of private earth tremors and the limits of an ocean of blood on the curve of a lonely coast.

All these poems are excerpted from his book, A Dictionary Of Foreign Dreams

Mgr. art. Pavol Janik, PhD., (magister artis et philosophiae doctor) was born in 1956 in Bratislava, where he also studied film and television dramaturgy and scriptwriting at the Drama Faculty of the Academy of Performing Arts (VSMU). He has worked at the Ministry of Culture (1983–1987), in the media and in advertising. President of the Slovak Writers’ Society (2003–2007), Secretary-General of the SWS (1998–2003, 2007–2013), Editor-in-Chief of the literary weekly of the SWS Literarny tyzdennik (2010–2013). Honorary Member of the Union of Czech Writers (from 2000), Member of the Editorial Board of the weekly of the UCW Obrys-Kmen (2004–2014), Member of the Editorial Board of the weekly of the UCW Literatura – Umeni – Kultura (from 2014). Member of the Writers Club International (from 2004). Member of the Poetas del Mundo (from 2015). Member of the World Poets Society (from 2016). Director of the Writers Capital International Foundation for Slovakia and the Czech Republic (2016–2017). Chief Representative of the World Nation Writers’ Union in Slovakia (from 2016). Ambassador of the Worldwide Peace Organization (Organizacion Para la Paz Mundial) in Slovakia (from 2018). Member of the Board of the International Writers Association (IWA BOGDANI) (from 2019). He has received a number of awards for his literary and advertising work both in his own country and abroad.

Pavol Janik’s literary works have been published not only in Slovakia, but also in Albania, Argentina, Bangladesh, Belarus, Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Canada, Chile, Croatia, the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Hungary, India, Israel, Italy, Jordan, Kosovo, Macedonia, Mexico, Moldova, Nepal, Pakistan, Poland,  the People’s Republic of China, the Republic of China (Taiwan), Romania, the Russian Federation, Serbia, South Korea, Spain, Syria, Turkey, Ukraine, United Kingdom, the United States of America and Venezuela.

James Smith Sutherland is a writer, critic, poet and translator.

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