Translated by Christopher Merrill & Author
A young roebuck darts across a clearing. The ancient shot,
on a bridge in the disappearing town, reverberates through the
age.
So what. Water surges over the riverbank. The Lord of Corridors
throws in a restless night of sleep in the villa by the rivers'
confluence.
The empty echo of His steps. The band in the park has gone to
sleep. You,
who survived the camps and cold of the Urals, walk by guards who
look the other way.
They flesh you a secret sign. And you glide across courtyards
paved with grey bones.
You crossed the last border long ago and learned the fundamental
lesson
of the world: only he who accepts the painful offering
survives.
Ignore the flowers' architecture! Strike as hard as He has
dreamed.
So that a skull crumbles like a vanilla cookie on the bottom of a
bowl. Strike!
So that the groans of children and angels glitter on the
blade, reviving
your instincts. Let the tribe recognize itself (if there is no
other way)
in the wound, let the last wall of the fortress fall to pieces.
For Miljenko Jergovię
Sing, young poet, touch my burning skin, darkened by long
treks
through the wild hills to the ends of the world. Don't give up
now,
though the gunners' fevered sights are trained on the stained
facades
of libraries and palaces constant reminders of a cruel century.
Just list what remains: flocks of swallows twittering under
ruined
arches and bell towers, the eternal wisdom of the French novel
we read in the bomb shelter, the blond peach fuzz which
disappears
from the baby's earlobes, dull thuds from the Pannonian plains.
The smell of gunpowder irritates the lungs. We haven't crossed
the threshold. Speak, then, when the pools of unconsecrated
water ripple. Rings glow in the depths. The past rejoices.
Believe me: I'm ready, sing to me for the last time of love's
temptations, of the mysteries of a woman's shadow, of marble
stairs. Sing, as you sang before your hair turned gray!
Let it be: may your ears never hear the fluttering of jays
covering the gutters of the watchtowers, like heaven's fruit. It
rots
in silence. May your steps measure the bottomless depths of the
academy's
drawing room: here an old dream is revived in the breath of
emissaries
from distant embassies. The dream of endless land, where the
same name
is spoken with the same dread. May your spit harden into crystal.
May your hand
caress no one. May the heroes who crossed the Illyrian hills and
lay down
in the dunes by the warm sea tell your future. Inevitably alone.
May the rising tide wash over the ruins the armies left
behind.
May the commanders listen with deadly seriousness to the orders
given by memory, which thickens like wax. You will use it
to seal up the legacy of pain growing steadily in the
collected works
of the court poets. They will flee with you to shores of the
divided
island. It will be too late when you kneel down before a cruel
star.
The new arc of your eyebrows draws a splendid arch
in the air, supported by the down of the angels, the ones who
guard
the doors to language. It's only rival is the grace of the mute
ballerina.
Imperfect verbs: like the green snow you see now for the first
time.
How it lies on a mountain range you cross in an instant.
Like a comet flashing from body to body. Your little arms embrace
the whole planet. You question the secret of the fool moon.
You're
a stranger to passers-by, a gift to me: from the touch of two
languages
your will grows. You take in everything, like a viaduct
boldly stretching from mother to daughter. You make
agnostic see: a quilt of lightning is more beautiful
then a field of buckwheat. Even I was struck. You were washed
clean
when you revealed yourself to me: the eternal word. I admit it:
I'm grateful to you for guiding me safely through the throes of
labour.
Your breath is intoxicating: fresh as an olive branch
slipped into the confessional. You're the funnel a typhoon
which forces demons and saints to speak the same language. And
stand in two orderly rows. Are you coming? The migration
of matter from the dead to living means nothing to you. You
bring
such beautiful unrest when you whirl around in your orbit. As if
uninterested in the division following ancient roads through the
capitals
This is our home today. Maybe tomorrow, too, if we still know how
to love.
You're sitting on the world, which bursts at the seams. You're
as thick as honey. Your whispered imperative must be taken
seriously:
to be. But a ghost train across the old continent, through
diplomatic corridors, carrying guests to a wedding. One guest
is fated
to wear a crown of thorns - and then to die of it. I alone will
wait for all
the faces to recognize themselves in one wrapped in a translucent
cloth.