Crocodiles Mass — Web Exclusive
By Tomaž Šalamun
Translated by Tomaž Šalamun; Michael Thomas Taren
Crocodiles are made. For example: how
the roadmender walked on the road
and saw, it rained. He remembered the
crocodile and thought, maybe the crocodile
suffers because of the rain. He immediately
took off his impermeable roadmender’s
jacket and gave it to the crocodile, immediately.
Or: there was a worker at the workplace,
looking down. The bucket of mortar in front
of his nose went up. He wasn’t working
because he was lazy, he knew he’d be
fired. So he just threw his cap in the
bucket of mortar and lost his cap, so
he was bareheaded till the Assumption.
Tomaž Šalamun is widely recognized as one of Central Europe's leading poets. He lives in Ljubljana and occasionally teaches in the United States. His recent books translated into English are The Book for my Brother, Poker, Woods and Chalices, There's the Hand, and There's the Arid Chair. His Blue Tower has just been published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
Michael Thomas Taren is a 2009 graduate of the MFA Iowa Writer's Workshop. His chapbook 08 September 2009 was published by Factory Hollow Press, and his translations with Tomaž Šalamun have appeared in, among others, Harvard Review, Jubilat, Colorado Review, Poetry Review (UK), Fence, and two books, Slovene Sampler (Ugly Duckling, 2008) and 7 Poets, 4 Days, 1 Book (Trinity University Press, 2009). He is currently in Slovenia on a Fulbright fellowship.
Original text: Tomaž Šalamun, Arena. Koper: Zalozba Lipa, 1975.