Irmin came back at five in the morning
From one of his escapades of all-night Vancouver.
And I had worried
For he hadn’t returned from his evening shift!
This morning I watched the ashy clouds
Over gray waves of the Pacific Ocean,
Down there, for miles below the windows
Of the mysterious Lady Gem .
The dawn exposed the cracks in the cloudy sky
And there was no sign of my friends from the universe.
In the living room of the affluent ground floor
The friendly poodle Cindy
Touchingly apologized
For disturbing my peace with its yawning.
It is a pleasure to read V.P. by the Bosnian poet Izet Sarajlic,
And page after page to ask jealously if the poet stole
My feelings.
He was waking up in this world before I was
And before me was gleaning red apples of life
That moonlight tossed
From large-crowned trees at midnight.
With a handful of crumbling soil,
Ready for the casket of the loved one,
The poet was angry at his friend Viktor Sklowski’s thought
That “there is no past and that living hurts.”
In the awakened cathode screen
Swings Josh Groben’s melody,
Whose voice in the family of tenors
Equals Baroque in Expressionism.
CONTEMPORARY POETRY
In the trembling you’re soft, melancholy
Nameless, shapeless
Your eyes like pears
Ripe and juicy
Worm-eaten
She danced on my forehead
In the horse’s hairy tail
Her smell
Scattered shadows on the neck
Reddish foam
Silky
To comb, fountain, or chaos alike
From one dog’s bark to another
Two long hours
Of carelessness
Behind the brows
Through dreams
Through softness
Sweet tear breaking
Thus audacious you triumphed
Your song was not a lark’s
Nor did you chirp in your chirping
In the morning among blades of grass
At noon a rosy prominence
In the whiteness
SEED
In the primeval compass
The heat of the trembling bell
Plunges
Down the lumpy furrow of passion
Like the midnight’s sleeping scent
The source moves closer to the mouth
In the desire to return to itself
To crawl back into the mother’s womb
Down the dark blue mist
The bulbous-headed lust sinks
Beneath the surface
Its lips distorted
Long
Trembling long
With soft fur around the neck
In the clench of anxiety
The bulbous-headed desire sinks
Beneath the surface
FATE
Is not fate proud and mute,
Tortured by difficulty, wrinkled by a rock,
Like rubber stretched by hand,
When returning in dangerous flight?
Is not fate somebody’s power,
And pride, mad luck,
Stick and arrow,
Bullet and space station;
For some, may the Creator of fate forgive me,
Soiled birth into the trash heap?
Isn’t fate triumph and death
In the eyes of the victor
And in the eyes of the victim?!
That same fate in which the flame sparks
And dies …
Is not fate for the spiteful one
Who turns off the light in another man’s harbour,
The same as that for the one infected by hate
Is fate ashamed of the crystal glasses raised to the sky,
And of the abyss in the eyes of the unfortunate,
And of the newly born orphans
Under the decks of the victor’s ships?!
Isn’t fate like a comet
Whose dusty trail
Batters us across time and space
And pulls a butterfly from cocooning larvae
Before our very eyes?
I SAW
The geese flew over the imaginative tops of skyscrapers
And screamed while flying south,
Where the courage of this frost behind mist fails.
Where the doors to return are open.
Window panes offered me a mirror,
The weary ocean surface offered me wonder.
I saw steaming sparks in my eyes
And the memory of the woman with a rose in her hair
In my pupils.
I saw … how the gray gloss,
Like the one on the paintings of wisdom,
Conquers the gracious arch of dark brows
And foments melancholy in the bud of surprise.
I saw in my dream the game of her senses.
I dreamed of the wind of awakened scents
Blowing locks of her hair
Above the crimson spring of thrilling purity.
I saw. She is being taken down the road of warmth
Back again into my memory.
I saw her blue eyes
In my dark ones.
Then I saw … The reddish water has awoken,
The waves’ crowns like seagulls.
Fishing boats hastened to the harbor.
The sky in the dark depth of water.
I saw the eclipse of the sun
And the world frightened of darkness at noon.
Behind my back
The screen invited me to watch Michael Moore
Grabbing the ruined statue of Bush Junior
From the hands of angry patriots
And carrying it in his hands
To the graveyard of the great.
To the place of no return
From where the sun never comes.
Beyond the eclipse. Never …
WOMEN IN MY NIGHTS
The women in the nights of my conquests
Were stronger,
Stubbornly confident when we touched,
Warm and polite,
Playful at the edge of trust,
Offering blue irises to the eyes of passersby.
I crept into their power
With a feeling of hopelessness.
The trembling of their bodies bewilders passion.
They stole the fragrance of their plump bosoms
From my eyes.
On my face they drew smiles.
While I was fighting the boiling breath in my lungs,
They roamed the pages of my innermost feelings.
The women performed the ballet of their hips
On the frozen lake of my wonderment
And threw the boiling balls of powdered snow
At the membrane of shyness
Under my eyelashes.
They are only
snowflakes of mute greetings
in the carriages of my midnight shamelessness.
MAESTRO
The rain came down softly
And sat on a wooden bench
Still warm from lovers’ bodies.
Just
awakened nocturnal darkness
Attracts rare winged creatures
Under the shimmering warmth of street lamps.
A robbed seagull squeaks on a balcony’s fence.
Through the half open window
The smells of sweet dishes in a magical Chinese feast
Bring voices that paint the dilemma
Of the beginning of the new age.
On the cold edge of the untrod pavement
A poor man huddles close to the bare back
Of an equally wary dog.
There,
Beyond the oracular waves of water,
Only two steps away from the street lamps,
Melancholy sounds of violins start calling.
And then,
Over the facades of the surprised city
The raving sounds of a piano
Spill crimson riffs of passion.
It is the mysterious genius
Diving boldly through my tranquil soul
And stealing the mirth of windplay from my eyes.
The notes play a daring pirates’ dance,
Dashing boldly through the magic treasure of my past,
And, like torches in the awakened genes of imagination
Create their version of her face.
He penetrates shamefully through the spaces of my egoism,
Rousing feelings in the time of my innocence,
His hands reach for her hair.
Touch the silvery strings of her pride
And then the fingers retreat ashamed
Of their daringness to touch the intimate.
Somewhere
From the Pacific Islands of Haida-Gwaii
The flakes of the late snow start falling
Performing a game of some other life
In front of the astonished eyes of a tiny white puddle.
DESCRIPTION
The blue violet opens its crown
In the sea of hawthorn bushes
With whiteness in their emerald hair.
The yellow breeze passes downhill
Past the murmur of the red chrysanthemums
In the blossoming fire of the sterile quince
The humming of the endless blueness brings dew
The bluish flame of the morning furrows
With the flight of anxious birds
Toward tomorrow’s nuptial orgies
Packs of blitzing antennas
To roads murmur adheres
Like a dizzying blue universe
Of extravagant inner awakenings
AN ODE TO WOMAN
You came to me quietly from scented dreams
Like an agile doe
With fear in your eyes.
You approached with suspicion,
Like a wave approaching the cliff.
You feared our love …
You came to me from another world
Where the imagination of the young men reigns,
You, my rose, with fear in your eyes.
I created your face through cobwebs
Behind closed eyelashes.
As you trembled in the leaf of a delicate willow
You held out your hands to me downwind
And caressed me with your whispers.
You came to me softly from willows by the river,
Like a wave approaching a cliff,
You, my rose, with fear in your eyes.
BEGGAR
Toss me a coin
But softly, please.
In the basket of my silver weaving
Feelings are silent.
Don’t roust the dream of the dreaming one.
Whole fields of seeds sleep
In the basket of my silver weaving.
Lay it down gently.
Let it murmur only.
In its song my happiness dreams.
In the midst of our city,
Somewhere under these candles,
My gleaming palace lies hidden
Among massed yellow tulip gardens.
In crimson sleep shadow my yearnings
Empty joy from the ewers of aromatic vines,
And sighs of melancholy breathe life
Into purple fragrant flowers.
Give me a coin
And that only
When your gift bears no silent anger
That I live among the lives of others.
Give,
As from the depth of the sea
A dolphin’s play
sprays a salty dew drop to kiss
A blade of grass on an arid rock.
Don’t give a lot!
In your coin my hope lives.
If you gave me the riches of the city,
The desire that fuels dreams would die.
Lay it down softly
Lest the ringing metal disrupt my dreams.
I enjoy in dream
The richest life
In the basket of my silver weaving.
LIFE
Life is a congregation of flames in a fire
That burns out and passes away,
And a blade of grass waging fierce battle
To emerge from under the horny soil
And reach for the sun.
Life is like water when,
Conceived by the sun,
It soars toward the azure sky
And when above
In its inspired adventure
Into curious shapes,
Inspirational and horrific,
Transforms,
And to the artist offers its Sistine idea,
And to the sorcerer, predictions
Of the fruits of his sorcery;
And it awakens hope for a fresh drop
In the thirsty blade of grass
And in the withered human creature.
Life is a like a torrent of roiling waters
Just before rampaging into the open sea,
Death of the self in an abyss full of other lives.
Or sometimes hiding under thick blocks of ice
In the liquid of crystal wine glasses
Awaiting its spring.
Life is found in the coarse games of crazy politicians.
It is conceived in deaths,
Regenerating in the bacilli of rotting meat.
Life is the perpetual movement from beginning to end
On the circle of time,
In which each imagined point
After merciless climbing
Into the adventure of certain descent falls.
Life is spewed forth by the volcano’s lava.
Undefeated, from the sleeping city
It retreats, from the frozen churchbells
And, like the intoxicating smell of fresh bread,
Life transforms into the games of lives of tomorrow.
MEN AND GOD
Some people have God
To help them on the path to happiness.
Some swear to God till death
As if taking him out of their pockets.
To some God is a hidden hope
For something better when this life ends.
To some he is just a façade
To reach personal goals.
Sometimes God is blamed for sorrows
People encounter on their life paths.
At times they raise his name to the heavens
Or push him into a half-broken vessel.
For him they built mighty and lavish edifices
Filled with darkness and wax candles,
Instead of giving him fields
Adorned with the sun and fragrance of fl
owers.
Some show him reverence piously and passionately
For all that sets him apart from humans.
For some he is the designer
Who created order on Earth and in the universe.
Some grasp God firmly in their fists,
Waving with him.
And he, perhaps, smiles mysteriously
And casts an eye on my rhymes.
To me is beautiful the old idea
That even the sons of Satan feel
They can wash away their repulsive origins
If they follow God’s paths.
THE BLIND WITH THEIR EYES OPEN
How wise
Under the veil of hidden dreams
You are, Pandora, the queen!
In an empty glass imagination reigns.
Paths of ignorance teeming with footsteps.
In my head, the heavy silence
Of the drenched city.
All wait for the miracle when the blind recover their sight.
Antennae in my bosom thread
Crimson contours of consciousness.
Within a political scene of drunken doctors,
Hippocrates
Sees a new arena of human lives,
And changes his will.
Mixed rules in the confusion of madness.
Bodies bind with grass roots …
Barbarism instead of hope!
In my soul souls murmur:
Pandora in chains!
Gods bound, hallucination …
Bouquets in broken vases.
The blind dash in with their eyes open.
In the underworld of limp power
Odors sprout.
IF HE EXISTED …
If he existed,
Would so much pain rumble over this planet,