Yesterday had a strange and beautify day.


Didn’t expect much ’cause I’d written four


poems the day before. I was reading


Kocbek in the morning, Junoš lent it.


He’s the only Slovenian matching with me.


Then I went to Christine’s birthday.


I was received by old Alfredo. He told me


the whole gang went to Cuernavaca,


they asked me to join them. You have to put


your phone in order, he grinned. The old dog


knows I’m hiding it. This small bourgeois


girl from Parma, lost in the faraway lands of 


her factories owning uncle, has no idea


what the writing claims. She’s pissed.


I’m constantly in a panic. She wants to


marry me. I felt stupid and abandoned, I


wouldn’t follow them for a minute. I went to


Kineret to order wine. Total theater.


If you’re here without a woman, they


think you came to buy a boy. For


half an hour it was perfect. The great march


past of racy guys, everyone asking for


a light or the time. Yep. I have both. I drank


wine, felt abhorrent, wanted to go home.


But outside, somebody was sitting I liked


the instant I noticed him. Didn’t dare approach,


he was alone. I circled, watching him,


thinking, and decided to join him. The chief


of pimps glanced at me in rage. I lost my


jitters. His look meant: this colt attracts you,


you slight my pros. I was relieved. Giorgio


told me story that baffled me. They


stole his travelers’ checks at Isla


Mujerez, and now he waits for new ones,


penniless. I have no idea why I believed him,


but I did. We talked until two AM


and when he gave me a saber carved out


of a tree branch, I was struck. Druids, page 63,


materialized. San Gorgio, home near Ascona,


two kilomters from Monte Verità, where


Hesse lived. I have met a friend. Such as


Gandalf. I translated then showed him


page 63. Now I will care for him, protect


him. We will go to Oaxaca, among Indians,


and eat mushrooms in places he already knows.


— Translated from the Slovenian by Michael Thomas Taren and the author