RECORDING TIME
on the night between April 27th and 28th 2001
2.00
Breadcrumbs
Jump like grasshoppers
Before the rain
And my goblet spills over
Onto the table
Which has stood firmly for years
Bearing the burden of food of generations.
2.07
All about the house I leave a trace
Of poor-quality paper
Whose words
Have stuck to my fingers.
Now you can follow the trace
Of words,
String sentences together.
2.15
Entire districts are evacuated
On account of talk,
The lunatic asylum van’s horn blares.
They beg me to come out
When I explain to them that nothing is
100% certain.
Tired, I go to sleep,
Setting the alarm clock to ring
In two hours on the dot, I get up,
Get dressed,
In the paper I read
That they are on the trail of the elixir of youth.
2.25
“Everything must
come to an end.”
Serbian proverb
Communism collapsed
Like badly played notes.
Nobody had a musical ear
And out of love for his/her own voice
Everyone wanted to silence
The others.
2.30
I am no longer 5 years old
Or 10
Or 15.
Mozart began at the age of 5
As did Martina Hingis.
For my fifth birthday I got
An accordion.
When I learned the multiplication table
I got a hunting knife
With which I slaughtered the accordion later.
Much later, I played
To those younger than me
That the multiplication table
Is the basis of multiplication.
2.39
I chased people away with garlic
I was powerless before witches.
They came
During my rests
And took over my preoccupations.
They walked away with vampires
Anaemic fools.
2.46
I secure awakenings
By jumping off buildings.
I never keep a wire net on the window
Mosquitoes, too, are living creatures
They, too, fall for blood.
RABBIT POEM
To Đođo,
Assuming
That our rabbit lives
Crossed once.
Through a hole in the head
A finger’s breadth wide, a draft blows.
That day
When I picked a grey rabbit
To be my pet
And then returned it
And took a yellow one instead,
Did I save one,
Dragging it by the ears,
And push the other one,
Betrayed,
To its fate?
Did Grandfather,
Breaking its neck
With a knife handle,
Know
That the stew
Wouldn’t have the time
To get cold in his belly
That he wouldn’t wear for long
The coat made from the fur
Of the rabbit
Still jumping all over the fridge?
Only I noticed
Even though I was small
That our neighbour
Hid her gaze under her skirt
After browsing grass
She took her grandson his lunch
And pulled her ears
When he looked at her with someone’s eyes.
To that boy
Whom I resemble somewhat
She said, the one who fled afterwards
And whose paws served for pounding
When she was frightened – you’re a real rabbit
Which made his ears turn red
And her teeth go bad.
Her daughter fled that night
20 years before her birth
to join Bunnies.
Under the same roof, my grandfather’s,
Where I decided the fate of rabbits
Where the skin in the attic was dry
And prepared to take in those
Who stamped their feet when they were
Frightened.
THE FIRST DAY
Our neighbour Vesna reminiscing about
the ceremonial ending of our childhood.
And it all happened so normally
a girl came
took a boy away
in a blue car
not saying good-bye for the first time
they drove away.
Rain started falling
and washed traces of chalk from the street
(the pigeons did not make the time)
pieces of the puzzle were being fit together.
The ball was thrown into a yard to cool down,
where it accidentally found a rose thorn.
I was sitting on the terrace
had I fallen off it
I wouldn’t have seen any of this.
I dangled my legs
then entered the house
through the big door
without taking off my shoes.
A SMALL FIELD
An empty space
Walked upon
By those whom I loved.
Clouds scatter across puddles
Big houses with safe dreams.
A truck trailer
Flight for young wasps.
Naked trunks...
Small hairs on the cracked tongue of the desert.
A safe phone number
Nothing will happen on it.
Experiments...
The smell of a freshly stolen beam.
And nothing...
And something
Worse than nothing.
A wasps’ nest soaked with rain...
The truck has gone...
The beams have dressed...
A night of birds’ tongue.
EMPEROR ASA
A pigeon fell down
Hit by a board
The elongated hand
With which we built the house
So that upon its boards
There should be room for everyone
And now
There’s none even in the attic
For the pigeon
Let alone anyone else.
It alighted upon the bedsheets
A gentle flight
It lay trying
Its claws clenched, its neck twisted, its wing over
its head,
So as not to see the rescuer
Worried about it, the bedsheets and the elongated arm
From whose final joint
It took a few drops of water
And then started vomiting.
I shook my pyjamas
Not a breath of wind
With a forceful movement
It was as if a child flew out of it.
The pigeon was on the rubbish heap
When I saw it next
Its lean eye open.
Emperor Asa, the king of heights.
IN A POINT
Pigeons in a point
pigeons make time
we lie in the grass
and watch.
Then this grass
actually someone’s hair
and the sun a fake
dares not look in the eye.
Pigeons in a point
a choir of cats singing from the stomach
hawks alight on the head
and peck with all their might
the rain starts
an elephant turns up from somewhere
and whispers
in the voice of a shy divorcee:
- Fool, they’re not in a point
there are bugs in your eyes.
I rub my eyes and walk away.
HORNET
It fluttered
Above me
I drove it away
Out of fear.
I covered it with a sheet.
When I saw
I couldn’t harm it
Yet again...
I closed my eyes, tired.
In tiny hexagonal images
I saw each part of myself:
Hitting
Babbling
Small curses
Until I turn into a crumb
And am thrown into the grass.
They say they saw me
Sting an angel
Kill a hornet.
I secrete the healing poison of silence.
APPLES
The apple-tree blossomed
in the clergyman’s yard.
I opened the fridge more often
than the window.
I imagined
the reddest apple
as your fruit.
When I saw your first boyfriend
your apples had been knocked down.
My framed space.
One apple
one fruit
one me
looking through the window.
Apples green
and ripe
seen through
peeled
breezers
window display pretty
marriageable
sour and sweet
more hairy down below
less hairy down below.
One
which has been entered by a worm
is rotting
sweet to the tooth
until it dries
and becomes the seed
of a new tree
and a boy.
PRAYER
Help me get rid of the shell
And not to carry the house on my back
Not to remain hollow
Not to be just an echo
Of someone who used to live there.
AND IT LOOKED
DIFFERENT…
I drink espresso with
milk,
in an old club
that they have changed
to make it look better.
I, not feeling better
at all,
drink coffee,
which I don’t drink otherwise,
in a club that has
never meant anything
to me.
TO REBA
A year ago my uncle
Zoran Rebić died
it seems to me that
no one loved him enough
and that he extinguished the fire with alcohol.
For, during his lifetime
what was enough
was not at all clear enough.
10.04.2005
QUIETLY AND SECRETLY
If we quietly
pass each other by
there was a moment
when I loved you infinitely
and now it’s quietly and secretly
I feel that moment
and nothing else
nothing else.
If I see you with a pram
and kids and grandchildren
there was a moment
a memory of someone else
and trembling and shivers down my spine
and now someone quietly
and secretly
offends
that moment
of something else
of someone else.
And so
quietly and secretly
we’re getting closer to the grave
you used to hide…
I found your plainness lovely
what am I talking about?
The hairs on your legs, gummed-up eyes, snot
and the hatred towards me
it was lovely to me.
Now,
I pass you by
in your prime
without noticing you.
DON QUIXOTE
Lucky you, Don Quixote
she’s reading you now
studying for the World Lit 1 or 2 exam.
She’s reading you
and cares more about you
than about me
Quixote, you sod.
She reads you all night
you lucky sod
she disconnects her phone
to be alone with you
and I keep calling her
to look at Brana Petrović,
but no,
she says she’s preparing your exam:
- But you’ll never need any of that.
- But some of it stays in your cerebellum.
Quixote, you crazy sod,
do you know whose brain you’ll stay in?
THE YARD POEM
We chased Živanka’s rooster around
all morning
for our hens are no sluts
to be trodden by just any rooster
we even used a broom
but he kept coming back
who says poultry love
is less bright
than us
starfish
or slugs.
WITH MYSELF
I try to make peace with myself
no such luck,
no use,
I don’t go easy on myself
I don’t go easy,
and a voice inside me goes,
soft and sleazy,
and then bursts out
don’t go easy on yourself,
don’t go easy!
TO YOU,
I haven’t signed a single poem
the night’s too dark
if I live to see the morning
you’ll remain alone
unprepared
for me and my nonsensicality.
THAT BRINGS LUCK
When you stuff love
in a bag
and then throw, kick, hit
the bag
and it hurts, hurts,
that brings luck.
When you erase
your list of friends
and see that you are broke
that there’s no one left to squander you
and the bag is desolate and empty
that brings luck.
When you shake off the leash
and get rid of your mother and father,
relatives, well-wishers, aunts,
and go to sleep
in mud and silt
seeking fortune,
that, too, brings luck.
When you finally see
that you are alone under a cloud
and that everything around you is grey, lukewarm
that you sought love
and got the greatest hatred of all
Baudelaire, Crnjanski and Poe
lived that way
you, too,
sought fortune amidst junk
it’s anything but luck
that brings luck.
* * *
Thousands of writers speak through
my pen
thousands of writers and letters
I would gladly line up
and shoot
to no avail since their fate
is written in books.
PRAYER POEM
She had to go to her boyfriend
О Lord
So what, so what
What I’d gladly do to them...
Forgive me, Lord.
She says he called at an awkward moment
I say how true
And think of what I’d like to do to that son of a bitch...
Forgive me, Lord.
And she won’t have time for me
Neither tomorrow nor the day after,
Who know when she will
Presumably when she passes all the World Lit exams
I don’t know what I’ll do
And I change masks
And put on masks
And change city girls
Thinking of her.
If you could...
O Lord,
Forgive me, Lord.
WALK
I walk about the house
thinking...
In three hours she became
the centre of my world
three hours of conversation
on Tuesday, April 5th, 2005
around 5 p.m.
on a raft near “The Danube Flower”.
A LITTLE DIARY
I have no strength
I am afraid of failure
I have no more friends
you have all that
and are younger to boot
you look at me
from some other world.
* * *
After each conversation we have
I write 20 poems
if we talk on the phone twice
that’s a collection of poetry
when we don’t ring each other
I don’t write
I think a little
practise breathing a little
lest I should forget.
WHITE NIGHT
A little something
hurts,
but it’s nothing.
Prison walls
love me,
as do whispers,
autumn watermelons,
cemeteries,
slaves’ looks,
mammals,
bugs, gallows,
bayonet tips.
White night
loves me,
- Long live ’45.
A goodnight rag
that I sucked
as a little boy,
decomposed into nothingness,
has survived.
And I don’t know
how to defend myself
from their love.
A CHANGE OF WORLDS
Once Socrates
spoiled the young
and now they are spoiled
by folk singers
only they are not
troubadours, minnesingers, dancers
but
ploughmen, diggers,
failed hoe-wielders,
doleful plough-holders.
Girls
(who have left the cooperative)
only they are not hetaerae
to whom we should dedicate
verse metres
to them it means nothing
nor do stadiums or theatres
they are not prostitutes either
for prostitution is ideology
love has become passé
the rest is demagoguery.
States
yes, there are small ones
but those are not
polis-states
or democracy
you don’t drink hemlock
after the death sentence
you drink poison first
and then they try you.
STUPID PHONES
I’m sitting
by the phone
she’ll say
and then I’ll say
and what if she
won’t any more
she’s not answering
it’s rung three times already
I’ll have to leave.
And I do it again
it rings and rings
and rings
one more
and I give up,
it rings,
just once more
and yet again,
stupid phones,
something’s wrong with the switchboard.
It’s not easy
Our switchboard
dates from ’41.
I’ll call her on Wednesday.
Digit by digit, carefully
no mistakes this time
I call, she answers
at once.
- Honey, I called
once, to be quite frank,
and then 73 times more.
- Who do you wish to speak to?
- Irena Javorski.
- Sorry, wrong number.
- But that’s no reason for you
not to put me through.
Do you understand?
- You’re a fool,
do you know that?
- Sorry, I
keep thinking about her.
Slam, toot-toot, toot-toot,
an ambulance or a police
car
this sound,
that’s the moo
of hungry grass
in the mouth of an ox.
And again, nothing,
she doesn’t answer
the cell phone
nothing,
and then it switches off
“UNAVAILABLE
CALL LATER”,
a little later,
“CALL LATER”.
I mean,if she didn’t want
to answer
she wouldn’t say call
later.
All day
I didn’t call her
and then another
that some kind of a record
finally,
on the third day
she calls,
flustered at first, and then
speaks louder.
- I have a boyfriend ,
not one
but a hundred
and more.
Oh, she loves me,
how careful she is not to hurt me.
- And I love you, too!
You can’t hide from
happiness.
- Leave me be, you idiot.
Another switchboard glitch
I’ll call her again
later.
I MAY BE SLEEPING
You are no more
you threw yourself under a train
jumped out of the window
an A-bomb fell
that was you
splashed with rain
you slashed your head
off someone else’s neck.
I’m as explosive
as wet dynamite
but it’s best no one should try me
I can still drive,
fly,
I explode
when least expected
I wake the one
of whom no one knows
where he sleeps
to play poker
I lose
I put it about that I let him cheat
that makes him mad.
I sleep
he can’t sleep.
JUST LIKE THAT
I turned around
cricked my neck
sprained my leg
you wouldn’t even call.
Broken teeth
bloody dog-like nose
are not enough for me
you are not enough for me
having fallen to me like a pear
while I was looking for blackberries.
I expected
either a funeral
or to be called to your wedding
as it turned out
while I rushed
you took your time
you passed me by, life,
like everyone else
just like that.
FOR THE SOUL
To Zoran Davinić
We sit
in a sailing ship of a bar
my late friend and I
my friend and the late I
we order a round of drinks
for both our souls.
CAPITULATION
Today I have capitulated against
Everybody
Friends, enemies,
Clever ones, fools,
Expectations,
Ancestors, sons,
Loves, books,
Today I have capitulated
Against writing,
Deadlines,
Time, counting,
Roving, being bored,
Sleeping,
Aspiring,
Waiting,
Lying,
Complaining,
To myself, and to others of myself,
Of others,
Of these, of those,
Today I have capitulated
Against
Fears, crying,
Insecurity, trembling,
Size,
And its diminution.
Today I have capitulated against
Ignorance, knowledge,
Charges, battles,
Removals, folding,
Unfolding, not folding,
Against
Parades, masks,
Cleaners, academicians,
Outlaws, tailors,
Eccentrics,
Cheese pies,
Cigarettes, buffoons,
Toilets, pedestrians,
And queens.
Today I have capitulated against
Instruments at the Kolarac concert hall,
Pickaxes, spades,
Aces, trumpeters,
Dissidents, priests, dancers,
Swans, sea cows (and land ones),
Pančić’s spruce,
The apricot-tree from which a swing swung,
The apricot-tree that is no more.
Today I have capitulated
To God and the rules of nature.
I take myself off the wall
Like a picture
Leaving a white trace
Where my image was.
* * *
I copied
sort of overheated
sort of placed a thought
on the block
sighed
and laughed.
