But Thinking All This
Believe what the heart says—so I thought,and did not think I was naive
to put away my fears and believe:
you were in my arms. Although taught
from my earliest years to trust the love
of God, I had become more wary.
Man’s love was a gift when it came, and rarely
it came to me. What was I thinking of?
You, of course, and this sharp joy, and that
after long darkness, there now was light.
That this was a gift—could it be right
to enumerate the reasons not
to accept it? Acceptance was its due.
But thinking all this, had I thought of you?
Can God, or the gods who design our desire
ever again be trusted? When you turned
away from me, these bleak lessons I learned:
—The world is broken, nothing is entire.
—Time heals, but not all things.
—Anger passes.
—A hollow hope is all that remains
when love dissolves in bitterness and pain.
—But this, too, is a gift, a sort of stasis.
What was I thinking of? Not you, of course,
only myself. In love or loss, it seems
I never completely escape old dreams;
I always want some larger universe
plotting the whole thing out, a mystery
at work—when what there is, is you and me.
But Thinking – Spoken Word Version by Rawley Grau
Rawley Grau has been translating literary works from Slovenian for over twenty years, including poetry by Milan Šelj, Miljana Cunta, Miklavž Komelj, Janez Ramoveš, and Tomaž Šalamun, among others. His prose translations include novels by Dušan Šarotar, Mojca Kumerdej, Sebastijan Pregelj, and others. His translations of Šarotar’s Panorama and Billiards at the Hotel Dobray were shortlisted for the Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize. He is currently working on translations of a volume of poetry by Aleš Debeljak and a novel by Ana Schnabl. In 2021, he received the prestigious Lavrin Diploma from the Association of Slovenian Literary Translators. His translations from other languages include A Science Not for the Earth: Selected Poems and Letters (Ugly Duckling Presse) by the Russian poet Yevgeny Baratynsky, which received the AATSEEL prize for Best Scholarly Translation, and The Long Coming of the Fire (Deep Vellum), a volume of poems by the modernist Macedonian poet Aco Šopov, co-translated with Christina E. Kramer. Originally from Baltimore, and formerly resident in Toronto, with brief sojourns in Leningrad and Nashville, he has lived in Ljubljana since the early 2000s.
Art: Love in the Fissures, Versions 1 & 2, Vispos by Robert Frede Kenter (c) 2025.
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