I passed this guy a few days ago and noticed somebody had put flowers in his lap. Perhaps they felt sorry for the man who had become stiff from waiting... but waiting for whom, or what?
The man had a name when he was alive and maybe somebody who liked his poetry honoured his memory in this fashion...
The man's name is Edvard Kocbek and he was a controversial figure in the recent history, a political dissident and poet par excellence. Something I found translated into English for a taster:-
REQUEST
I implore my memory to reach back, to seize all doubts
and despairs, all hopes and passions, all dreams and funerals,
all prophecies and disappointments, all the killed, crippled
and wounded, desecrated, all exalted on altars and wrapped in
flags, all intoxicated by happiness and sobered from sorrow, let me
remember all weepings and jubilations, all funny stories and loves,
all sins, all leaps into the unknown, all fires, floods, earthquakes
and God's commandments, let all the tender fragile ties that bind
body and soul, me and someone else, be revealed, let me perceive
all conceptions and gentle abandons, all the shameful
confessions and states of purity, let the remembrances of a
l these vibrate inside me and my surroundings, and let me be
included in the collective guilt and the collective absolution.
I, thus, request to be able. to keep neighbors in front of and behind
me, be the middleman of messages from the future even though
they at times are strange, incomprehensible, threatening or
calming, brief or tedious. It is probable that none of us fully
understands the whole game, but courage itself is absolute
and all-knowing.
5 comments:
Isn't it nice that somebody remembered him and now you did.
I keep trying to leave a comment here, but it won't take!
It figures! Just when I give up, the program corrects!
IT sounds as though he's written the definition of a poet.
I love looking at this figure with the lap of flowers. Thank you for sharing a bit of his poetry. I must confess that it is hard for me to wrap my brain around poetry. I tend to think pretty black and white minded when I read....which is funny because I think my writings go everywhere. But I liked this piece. I think it was about not ignoring life's happenings. Gather them all up and hold on to them because it defines us, shapes us, and gives us courage to move forward.
I love these kind of statues. The real life qualities are so appealing to me.
Thanks for sharing it - wonderful photo.
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