A Dictionary of Foreign Dreams | Pavol Janik

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!

(1998)

Indian Review | Author | Pavol Janik was born in 1956 in Bratislava. He is poet, dramatist, prose writer, translator, publicist and copywriter. His literary activities focus mainly on poetry

Indian Literature Review | Author Profile |Pavol Janik, PhD., was born in 1956 in Bratislava, where he also studied film and television dramaturgy and scriptwriting at the Academy of Performing Arts. He has worked at the Ministry of Culture (1983-87), in the media and in advertising. President of the Slovak Writers’ Society (2003-07) and the Secretary-General of the SWS (1998-2003, 2007-2013). He has received a number of awards for his literary and advertising work both in his own country and abroad. This virtuoso of Slovak literature, Pavol Janik, is poet, dramatist, prose writer, translator, publicist and copywriter. His literary activities focus mainly on poetry.

Translator Profile | James Sutherland Smith, was born in 1948 in Aberdeen, Great Britain, is a poet, translator and critic. He began translating Slovak poetry with the help of other people notably Stefania allen who was his co-translator for “Not Waiting For Miracles”, the first anthology ever of contemporary Slovak poets in English. Since then with his wife, Viera, he has translated over 100 Slovak poets with significant collections of the work of Ivan Laucik, Jan Buzassy, Mila Haugova and Milan Rufus.¬ http://www.jamessutherland-smith.co.uk/about.shtml