I love to call you but when you ask: “What’s new?”

immediately you provoke and confuse me:

to intensify, recreate, reshuffle, recolor,

today’s news of this monstrous, faceless, northern continent.

I love it when you ask me again, because you don’t get it,

who was that with me, what did he say, how much did he have to drink…

My ego soars to unimagined heights,

ignited by the spark of your curiosity.

Your voice awakens me from a slumber,

as clear as though it were a dragonfly ascending from Chair.

Your phone call lifting me across the meadows, the tree tops,

in an exhilarating breeze, up to the tinkling stars…

(About the sirens warning of the air raid,

about the music from old movies on TV Belle Amie,

about the snap of the detonation through the open window, caught

on the string of your voice, suspended in air, I won’t talk now.)

Denying the sober truth, we remember the dream –

Is it this night already? What month is it? What day?

My eyes fog over and hands rattle, though things begin to bloom

On the birds’ path, somewhere between these Great Lakes and your Nishava river.

“In Chicago, a young man, Stajic,

twenty-six years old, killed himself because of the war,

and in distant Tasmania, another young man goes on a hunger strike.”

The news of today’s state of pain, our pain, from afar.

(I avoid putting in the poem anything not yours and mine,

I avoid it so you won’t suspect my encounters with Death

On the park path where I walk; sneering at me, unveiled,

Death tells me her vultures have released the sun for us this time.)

As usual in the morning, I’m drinking coffee in my pajamas on the ninth floor

With my view of the dawn. Emerging from the elevator, my Canadian neighbors,

Elderly ladies, proclaim: “Isn’t it a beautiful day?”

What shall I say, as I pass, of the Birds of Death they cannot see?

Talking to the decomposed body of Allen Ginsberg,

Whose voice is in my thoughts, like the smile of Jesus at Calvary,

I ask him, why this and what should I say when I dial your number?

What sign of love did the world carry when he was alive?

Here is his message:

“Aware Aware wherever you are No Fear

Trust your heart Don’t ride your Paranoia dear

Breathe together with an ordinary mind

Armed with Humor Feed $ Enlighten Woe Mankind”

                                          Toronto, May 02, 1999

                                           (Translation: Biljana D. Obradovic and John Gery)

Notes:

Chair: an old park in the middle of the city Nis
Nisava: the river in the city Nis
Great Lakes: the author lives in Toronto, Canada on the lake Ontario

Click here to read more on Snezana Ivkovic

ForPoetry