Nina Živančević 

Translator

Love is blue  love is gold   love is true

stop being childish  write that poetry

swallow your medicine   brush up your shoes

and go to school    and be a fool

get out of your castle and blow it off Orlando said

noon is humble feeding on crumbs

small objects speak Swahili and retain their post

modern post comatose glamour where night shivers

and closes its shimmering veil

saved from certainty saved from knowledge

saved from the poverty of information

along a shady dock

an object takes its place

 round and wise and nourishing

 it says nothing about its hidden days about its strange taste

about its glorious past

it is extemporal

Mother  do you love me?

Mother   do you care?

And do I care, for you?

There you will trot

along the tiny pebble path and leave me all alone

in the universe peopled with buns and stars and

shiny trinkets  staggering books and loud records

subliminal objects  cheerful dictionaries encapsulated in time

with carrots beetroots thistle remedies

witch’s brews cobblestones agate rings cobalt sunsets

light rain washes away huge robots impertinent bills

mortgage loans    stupid yawns hammered in

love comes back to me and is

blue  gold and true

Never did I think of you before you were gone

The table was clean the glass empty the plate 

 full of my mistakes and you just slid through

 the door was closed and someone was knocking at it

Come in I said

The wind pushed it open

That was an old woman with a ragged face

Spitting blood was somewhat lonely was dressed

Like my mother and looked like me

She smiled at me and toothless curse had reached

Me there, I am your death she said, oh I am not ready

Not ready right now have to read a lot of Stoics have to acquire my Buddha hood

Get ready she hissed and I pushed her away, slammed the door and fell down

Woke up covered with Gothic sweat

I turned on the radio and listened to Bach

Lived with some people who hated poetry

Serendipity in fashion stupidity in labour

Speedy fingers of Glen Gould

At one occasion he claimed he encountered God

Counterpoint is everything, like in music like in life

He said while humming along Bach’s exuberant variations

Ironing wrinkles of serenity  sprinkling the lawns of domesticity

Feeding house mice thrilling expectations

They were not great they were not solid they were not cold

They were just miniscule whispers of that loud

 staccato of her insanity      that unbearable arpeggio of his complicity

that bloody counterpoint of his lousy promise

night will wash away the pebbles

soaked in mud  expressionist yearning

sweet sweet smell of amber the odour of amber

neutral and divine

very French and rigorous  unprotected stern

scared and oblivious

the trucks loaded with words

sentinels of yearning   ministries of waiting

cafes filled with challenge

schools full of undertakers    names peppered with history

jokers  stuffed with science

a bluff    a cough     a nut

he is a bluff  and you are a nut

and we are riding in a magic shell

covered with ice and legendary silence

come to me   right now

the eye of my apple  heart of my flower

is trying to keep that promise it

made at the bottom

of the deepest crimson sea 

someone has tried to do me in

Someone was sad and really bad

Someone has tried to wash it off

Someone has tried to brush it down

Someone has tried to play the clown

Music was good and so we tuned in

And there you’ve gone snapping your fingers

Dialing numbers and howling at the moon

You said AMAN* and I said ZAMAN**

For the sake of Lord and to the end of time

My feet so light and thoughts so heavy

A hopeless night and shimmering sky

Cold thin air to the end of time

Tumultuous hooves and headless riders

If we move an eyelid will such RAHAT

And sheer light show the hour of SAHAT

OK, Bashi, let the girls weave the fabric

Of oblivion

You said AMAN and I said ZAMAN,

For the sake of Lord, and to the end of time

The symmetry of that cemetery

Has fed on so many dancers

The flightless eagles and sleepy lions

Have heard our song before it was recorded

Before we rehearsed and uttered these elegant notes

This sleepless presence this patient flutter

You said AMAN and I said ZAMAN

Aman, aman, to the end of time.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

*Aman- “until the end of” (in Persian)

**Zaman- “time” (in Pers.)

The doctor came and saw me and what did he prescribe?

You’ve had too many poems for dinner,

Far too many plays, three bad novels and two borderline novellas

Five doggerels for breakfast and a romance for lunch

Very very bad for your diet  very very sad for your brain

WHAT A STRAIN WHAT A STRAIN   WHAT A STRAIN

And the doctors come and go munching seedy sultanas

Wearing dirty bandanas reproducing an everlasting shock

In a life filled with schlock, schlock and sleaze,

 mice and geese

Made at the bottom

of the deepest crimson sea

They wrote hefty volumes on Allen’s poetry

After all, he took himself quite seriously

Just once, he said, “it’s a shame, they’ve got you”,

But who were “they” he did not say…

He probably meant – the gargoyles of capitalism,

But he said so many things. and sometimes

I would drift away, and sometimes I would fall asleep…

And I would probably always outguess what he meant

 but it was just “probably” and I was just a “would”

who wanted to change her life, living like

Beckett after Joyce, tinkering with three languages to

Write in, losing the essence biiiig way

Obeying the gargoyles of money and place biiig time,

And it was just “probably” that I would write and earn my credit

Like Gertrude Stein, as I was not

An American in Paris, as I was just- like Allen had mentioned

Before “A crazy Eastern European, in New York, somewhat like

Naomi totally left alone, to her own madness….”

Then Peter, repeating the family pattern, Anne and Steve

And Bob keeping a tiny flame, a hope

Their presence at the wake

And then the vultures, people who never read the Sunflower sutra

The supermarket oracle the Wichita the Vortex, the Sutras

Allen patting my belly three months before I delivered my baby

I saw him only once after that   we saw a movie

He regretted for not having children,

Then Peter, repeating the family pattern, Anne and Steve

And Bob keeping a tiny flame, a hope

Their presence at the wake

But he had no children

We, Eastern Europeans understand each other quickly, he said,

We think too fast, of course Allen said to mini- me

But we are on mescaline and we’re supposed to think fast—

Nothing, just nothing is too horrible or too beautiful

Whatever it appears to be, it’s not me, Ginzy said, but

Dudjom Rinpoche, and I kept laughing and laughing

“I don’t want to see you sad face anymore”, he added.

He loved that old Blake’s “O, Lo’ why did you make

me so different from the rest of the world, good Lo’,

why have I become a poet?”

The crumbs lie on the table waiting to get dry
just in case the Unavoidable forgot to collect them.
The same with me, I speak to my left hand
while slowing the other hand down, the one which would rather work.
The speed does not frighten us as long as we cannot obtain it;
It is always with us, even when we are not around,
when we are absent, numb or asleep.
It never reaches us there.

Had I dreamt of the crumbs?
No, it did not happen, no significant loss here.
They always dry out, even at the bottom of the deepest sea:
This is what I was about to say, had it been correct elsewhere.
It is also good this way. I will remain seated a bit longer,
go to bed, let them collect me.
In this way we open the world which suffers no loss
as it was gained awhile ago so that it wouldn’t crumble down.

The sun is shining thus we call this event a day.
But it stands there when we say it’s night time.

Yesterday I saw a stream looking for a rabbit,
a tiny one, shuddering, frozen,
with grey and trembling little paws,
And though it was summertime it didn’t find it.
They failed to meet again.
And what will happen when the winter arrives?

No stick, no carrot, neither downfall nor an idyll.
Perhaps they will tell us in autumn, once the final report was made.

The Moon stands there as well, it does not know why it was hung there,
close to the Earth and to the sky but so distant from them
as if it did not have its duty or an excuse for it.
It cannot neither harm itself nor help an other.
We cannot even see it clearly, it seems forgotten by them all,
as soon as the cloud covers it over or some corners of a house.
It does not live in a civil manner, it appears like a temporary thing
as transient as eternity, with its dumb glow like a fratricide.

All this is trying to tell us something, but there’s no solution to it,
or the solution appears to us silent like that empty speaker’s podium.

And tomorrow, at that very spot, we’ll be able to observe the saints
and the previous starry firmament will be damaged by its glitter,
filled out with gentle warmth, a bit screwed out,
as the saints never say anything unless they are told to do so.

But who is to tell them anything in that vast vacuity
in which all things except for themselves appear as the screen,
a dumb documentary in the cold television eye.
All peace and tranquillity in this universe are transparent like glass
across which a bunny rabbit runs smearing it with its paw.

Perhaps another rabbit will show up instead trying to clean it with its own                                                                                                                                 paw
and perhaps it will not. The end has no need for balance.

It is interesting to be alive
and above all other things it’s useful
for  mankind.

That is a measure for pain.

The dawn has never invited me
and my skin is dark. The skin
of twilight covers the sun by itself
and wakes up at night by itself.
The pink sky remains afterwards, the redness that creates the
sunshine and white feathers are falling off the angels’ wings.

Gőring dreamt of  “messerschmidt”
because  he loved gold.
I love to see Gőring’s gold in my hands
and the airplanes bright with speed, the soundless ones which
carry my sex towards the Caribbean.

Dawn is dark there,
bright shadows are dark there and oil in jugs as well.
Even the coconut is dark there as much as the children
who drink its milk for hours
clenching their dark Gőring between their teeth for days.

Their laughter rings happily then
and it is golden in the dawns of May
as they dream of the holiday of their first Leninist pain.
I will die and the world will become boring again.
A trap for cold days.