In the forceful fine dust That showers down from the blue fountain On my palms are hot poppies Withered branches already dark ripe Early wounds and crows From a jump that never falls into any sweetness The flower of a vanished smile Live barefooted desires And there is the dear moisture in the depth of a dark eye And the […]
And now let us finally go now let us clearly depart In this unwitnessed walk finally now there In the sack there is the bread and the stone there is the knife and the heart let us go let us depart from there where we do not remember whether we ever were or at any time were anything we arrived there […]
Eye Between wave and wave between evils without ground without roots in this blue in this grey in this black of bitter burnings I will blossom in foam white rosy malicious eye no more will it know me From Modra Rijeka Translated by Keith Doubt
And this was writ By the captive who does not rejoice May he be the last captive The last man who has lost hope Translated by Omer Hadžiselimović and Stephen P. Meyer
How delicate and fragile you are How beautiful and pure Like every child when born Your hair silken and bedewed Like the leaves of a young plant’s stem in April Your lips are rose buds still to blossom Hands the blue intimation of dawn Legs as though you have none, you poor thing They are like two lilies for caressing […]
Like a bird sitting On the right Hand Oops Flies away My bird Translated by Keith Doubt
This hand says to you stop And contemplate your own hands. Translated by Keith Doubt
With hand raised to endless sky To great monuments around me I say All daily words entangled by the grave Which ensnare me in painful motion Pain magnifying on the way To the one Stop I say to the sun That scorches my scalp To the ground that holds me firm To the day that leaves again To the ancient […]
At the far end of death the hues shall be better Translated by Keith Doubt and Wayles Browne © 2012 Keith Doubt and Wayles Browne
FIRST Wrought within the body sewn into the hide You’re dreaming of the sky once more spreading wide Within the brain enclosed in the heart detained Ever dreaming sunlight but by darkness stained Prisoner of flesh imprinted into bone Can you bridge the distance To the heavens’ throne? SECOND Caged by the ribs in silver’s grip you rest No better […]
Above is Polaris And below Venus Over there the Northern wind and yonder the Southern Who’ll tell me where the Path to Love is And where the Path to Death Translated by Keith Doubt © 2011 Keith Doubt
Come, renowned man Of great Achaean fame Come Does your great heart That turned to stone in Troy Does your hardened heart This song fear Come renowned man Translated by Keith Doubt – © 2011 Keith Doubt
I dreamt I would someday build a bridge to the sun but of that wish remains only the foundation stone deep in my heart Translated by Anne Pennington
How shall we bury the screams deeply in the ground of oblivion So they do not reach us on these arduous paths How shall we place every cherished word and smile in these tight bags How shall we lace these swollen feet with ever tightening hide Behind us let sadness and her companions remain Rather than torches crusading in the dark […]
The Book of Genesis Chapter One In the beginning thou didst create the heaven and the earth And the earth was without form and void And there was darkness over the abyss And thou saidest Let there be light And there was light And thou didst see that the light was good And didst divide from it the darkness And […]
You have resolved that I shall not be and at all costs You come towards me and in your haste Laughing and weeping You sweep And destroy All before you You have resolved to destroy me at all costs But you cannot find The true path To me Because You know the deepcut and wellworn paths And no other (And […]
She sings still boisterously for a long time And we do not really know who she is or what she is And when we eat these well-baked tasty cakes That she herself prepares and serves We will be transformed into lions, wolves, boars Wild animals without their wildness We will retain all that otherwise adorns us Human propriety instantaneous Courage […]
To R. Konstantinović I wanted to listen, hear, understand the conversation between one wave and one conch But they told me, nice but have you been listening, hearing, understanding the conversation of those who walk upright like you of those who soar beneath heaven’s clouds like you but like you they are not birds they descend to the bottom of […]
Here lieth Gorčin the soldier In his own land On an alien Patrimony I lived But I summoned death Night and day I never hurt a fly I went off To be a soldier I’ve been In five and five campaigns Without shield or armor So that at last These throes Might cease I perished of a strange pain Not […]
FIRST Enclosed within a body encased in skin You dream of heaven’s fecund return Housed in a brain imprisoned in a heart The sun you revere from this dark cave Imprisoned in flesh locked up by these bones How can this space To heaven be bridged? SECOND Confined in a ribcage captured by silver In your grandeur no finer than […]