Refugees

by Ivan Štrpka
translated from Slovak by James Sutherland–Smith

This is the place in which day – and night
we constantly move, but it never moves with us
not even a hair’s breadth.

All things are under (unknown) snow (as the One)
and (soon) we tread uncertainly (how lightly)
on it.

Without a trace of analogy, the place vanishes. Not even
an interspace of an idea budding. Only a surface
on a surface on which all the names of things are lost.
Their absence overlaps with us.

The border. A patrol. Foreign sounds.
It sounds white in the naked ear of darkness.
And the dark, which doesn’t notice,
will stop us. The cold abides.