Alen Bešić
serbisch
Last Ink
In certain countries aromas pierce the heart and one dies
half waking in the night as an owl and a murderer's cart go by
the way someone in your life will talk out love and grief
then leave your company laughing.
In certain languages the calligraphy celebrates
where you met the plum blossom and moon by chance
—the dusk light, the cloud pattern,
recorded always in your heart
and the rest of the world—chaos,
circling your winter boat.
Night of the Plum and Moon.
Years later you shared it
on a scroll or nudged
the ink onto stone
to hold the vista of a life.
A condensary of time in the mountains
—your rain-swollen gate, a summer
scarce with human meeting.
Just bells from another village.
The memory of a woman walking down stairs.
Life on an ancient leaf
or a crowded 5th-century seal
this mirror-world of art
—lying on it as if a bed.
When you first saw her,
the night of moon and plum,
you could speak of this to no one.
You cut your desire
against a river stone.
You caught yourself
in a cicada-wing rubbing,
lightly inked.
The indelible darker self.
A seal, the Masters said,
must contain bowing and leaping,
"and that which hides in waters."
Yellow, drunk with ink,
the scroll unrolls to the west
a river journey, each story
an owl in the dark, its child-howl
unreachable now
—that father and daughter,
that lover walking naked down blue stairs
each step jarring the humming from her mouth.
I want to die on your chest but not yet,
she wrote, sometime in the 13 th century
of our love
before the yellow age of paper
before her story became a song,
lost in imprecise reproductions
until caught in jade,
whose spectrum could hold the black greens
the chalk-blue of her eyes in daylight.
Our altering love, our moonless faith.
Last ink in the pen.
My body on this hard bed.
The moment in the heart
where I roam restless, searching
for the thin border of the fence
to break through or leap.
Leaping and bowing.
Published with permission of the author
Aus: Handwriting
Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1998
Audioproduktion: Literaturwerkstatt Berlin 2010
POSLEDNJE MASTILO
U određenim zemljama mirisi se zariju u srce i čovek
umre u polusnu u noći dok sova i taljige ubice prolaze
baš kao što će neko u tvom životu razglabati o ljubavi i žalosti
a potom otići od tebe smejući se.
U određenim jezicima kaligrafija slavi mesto
gde si slučajno naišao na šljivin cvet i mesec
– blagi sumrak, skupina oblaka,
svagda zabeležena u tvom srcu
a ostatak sveta – haos,
koji okružuje tvoj zimski brod.
Noć Šljive i Meseca.
Godinama kasnije podeliš to
na svitku ili blago pritiskaš
mastilo na kamen
da zadrži pogled života.
Zgušnjavanje vremena u planinama
– tvoja kapija nabubrila od kiše, leto
oskudno u susretima s ljudima.
Samo zvona iz drugog sela.
Sećanje na ženu koja silazi niz stepenice.
*
Život na drevnom listu
ili pretrpanom pečatu iz 5. stoleća
taj odražavajući svet umetnosti
– leži na njemu kao na krevetu.
Kad si je prvi put ugledao,
u noći šljive i meseca,
nikome o tome nisi smeo da kažeš.
Sasekao si želju
na rečnom kamenu.
Zatekao si se
usred trljanja krilâ cvrčaka,
blago umrljan mastilom.
Neizbrisivo mračnije ja.
Pečat, govorio je Učitelj,
mora da sadrži saginjanje i skok,
„i ono što se krije u vodama“.
Žut, pijan od mastila,
svitak se odmotava ka zapadu
putovanje rekom, svaka priča
sova u mraku, njen dečji jauk
sad je nedostižna
– taj otac i ćerka,
ta ljubavnica što silazi naga niz modre stepenice
svaki korak ometa njeno pevušenje
Želim da ti umrem na grudima, ali ne još,
napisala je, nekoć u 13. stoleću
naše ljubavi
pre no što je hartija požutela
pre no što je njena priča postala pesma,
izgubljena u nepreciznim reprodukcijama
sve dok nije uhvaćena u žadu,
čiji je spektar mogao da zadrži tamno zelenilo
kao kreda plavu boju njenih očiju na dnevnoj svetlosti.
*
Naša promenljiva ljubav, naša vera bez mesečine.
Poslednje mastilo u olovci.
Moje telo na ovoj tvrdoj postelji.
Onaj trenutak u srcu
gde lutam nespokojan, u potrazi za
tankom granicom ograde
da se kroz nju probijem ili je preskočim.
Skačući i saginjući se.