Tomislav Kuzmanović 

Translator

You’re frightened and pale
and all you want is me to like you,
like a bar singer
with the cleavage of transparency
and a glass of champagne
in place of holy water.

I am in the corner
and the only guest in the café
for unique lovers
with the right of veto for the pain,
the past and the future,
with the possibility to forever
vanish when the lights go
off and on again.

You’re frightened and pale,
I’m in the corner and a guest,
yet still, we sing together:
we open letters for chalices,
make love on the table,
into the night, into the night.

You pretend that you know that one is
the biggest and the loneliest number
and every time you say: “You are one of…”
and I stop you with one
finger on the lips.

I pretend that I know that Magnolia
always plays in one invisible theatre
and that our readiness for madness,
because of the pressure in the sun’s assembly,
nervousness in small fingers of our hands,
those unneeded, mine and yours,
is greater than cut out tongues of lovers
on the smudged canvas of illusion
whose ends God and the devil pull.

We pretend that we know what life is.
If we touch it, it can be
a curtain, a wall, a tombstone.
When we only watch it,
then it’s a human face, skin,
bloody and perishable.
When we get tired of it, we bite each
other’s fingers off and play shadows.

We pretend that we know what the canvas is.

We pretend that it is one,
we pretend that we are one.

Every day I want to meet you again,
talk about the universe and all those odd distances,
about every possible and impossible sky,
every possible and impossible love.

I know, you’ll say I’m playing God, that I’m provoking,
that life is not time and the world is not this,
that the rain can’t change the sea and the land,
but it can melt the cross and the face.

Every day I want to forget you again,
not to speak about how I got lost, how you don’t see me,
about selfishness and my other dimensions,
all possible drops and impossible faces.

I felt his gaze the moment he entered.
medium height, broad shoulders, grey hair.
maybe from germany. I didn't hear him speak.
I crouched above the box with fish pate, pasting prices.
my white duster heavily unbuttoned, almost completely, I realized.
nothing underneath. it was a sultry day, and a duster
makes you feel cramped. I liked to leave my panties at home.
I'm not especially pretty, the way I am, delicate and freckled,
though with tall islanders legs, shaped by rocks and thickets.
finished by waves, scirocco and gale taking turns.
maybe I'm not a beauty, but my legs are really lovely.
he stood petrified. couldn't avert his eyes.
as if he never saw a woman's tuft. or, perhaps,
he never saw it under a duster. it gave it
a special softness and enigmatic quality. and
that little curl shiny in the counterlight: as if I
flung a fish-hook behind a cape and a fish swallowed it
instantly and wouldn't let it go. I already intended
to get up, when his stare pinned me down. I couldn't move.
it was a hypnotic paralysis, or even something worse.
then the story got screwed up by an italian with a fat lady.
he walked in, yelling and storming between the customers.
together with that woman he positioned himself between us,
in front of the refrigerator with milk and cheeses.
nice moments are clearly short-lived. I saw the grey head
move to the cashier. I rose and buttoned up
three accidentally loose buttons. is it tuesday today?
after work i'll stay home. that's all one gets from certain days.

How to climb the olive tree with those little claws,
stay a black lizard and survive the sun’s collapse?
every olive is an extinguished star,
and little claws are all we have.

and that’s the secret of gravity, the disappearance of light that swings
condensed in our metal bodies.
our claws are our vanity, the father shakes them off
the laced balcony curtain in one move.

the world is the giant pedicurist Milena, she eradicates them with a safe hand,
she sings o sole mio, our claws are an over-ripe, naked beauty
love is our debt to the dead.

dragozetići village is on the island’s far northwest.
just outside porozina ferry port.
steep approach, narrow streets, houses with terraces,
a church and an old italian school: a huge building with big
broken windows because long nothing happens in it.
the only place that emits fullness is filled with emptiness.
it follows the story of the island, big and deserted, or it just seems so,
because people are mostly tourists, who come and go,
and only those who never managed to escape stay on the island.
there’s nothing of cres on the island, because no one produces anything.
olives everywhere, but the oil is only from bra~.
sheep everywhere, but the cheese if only from pag.
yes, lamb meat: they have a special way of preparing it, in belo.
today i remembered that i don’t know anyone from the island of cres.
not a single person. and that long ago, in my last year of studies in the
south slavic department, i applied for a position on cres. and got accepted.
and that never before i had been on cres. and that i
panicked horribly. and that i came up with a disgusting lie. and that
i never actually went to see what kind of a job this was.
and that never after that did I look for a job at a school,
because i might get accepted, and this would mean trouble,
up to my neck, because some other place could also be
abandoned and sad like cres in november.
but, man, this island is beautiful, probably even more beautiful
than when hordes of italians and slovenes,
croatians, french and germans sniff at every hole,
turn every sheep shit over, peek in behind every curtain,
and then leave without having seen anything: they leave without a smell in their noses and
a taste in their mouths because they ate kebabs with onion
and burgers with sour cream, and drank laško or ožujsko beer,
soaking their dough-like behinds in crystal graveled coves.
dragozetići village is on the island’s far northwest.
just outside porozina ferry port.
steep approach, narrow streets, houses with terraces,
a church and an old italian school: a huge building with big
broken windows because long nothing happens in it.
the only place that emits fullness is filled with emptiness.

2004-08-09

yves sent me a text message:
for three days now some italian girl’s been watching me under water.
i watch her too, down there we’re naked and alone. on the surface
we don’t know each other.
i replied in our everyday slang:
be cool! stay well! after that, according to the next message,
he went under again, because “down there it’s calm and unbelievably beautiful.”
i understood his cry on that other, distant shore.
then i dived into marguerite yourcenar’s oriental stories:
made a trip to china, then kotor, dubrovnik, then i surfaced again
melancholically, even though that’s not in vogue anymore.
i saw several italian, four czech and seven plump hungarian girls.
i saw a sunshade twisting in the rhythm of the body,
i saw a pair of blue, tireless and bottomless eyes too:
i wanted to fight the desire for diving, but i couldn’t
look away, i couldn’t put my sunglasses on,
in general: i couldn’t move from my place in the sand,
in which, calmly and silently, i sank and sank.

2001-08-18

after two hours of nervous ride on a dirt
road, we drove, still hot from the trip, into an automatic
car wash. thick foam darted out of
numerous jets and the view from the vehicle got completely dark.
i took his right hand and placed it on my knee.
the world changed in a second: as if some
adrenaline broom had swung at him, he drove his hand
up: moisture broke through the panties faster than the streams
that fiercely flowed down the vehicle’s shiny slopes.
in a sudden jerk he stuck the same hand under my butt,
not moving from his seat, and with his thin, nervous middle finger
began conducting the war rendition of beethoven’s ninth,
which i knew only from a clockwork orange: philharmonic orchestra,
a well-known jewish soloist with a name difficult to remember,
a shimmering lamp far from the stage,
and a hand conducting energetically.
i went down as fast as a jaguar and thus
showed him the way. in a single move i let the fly
on his dark blue shorts with pockets on the side
burst into flower and a happy, nicely shaped dick was already
wriggling in my mouth. i drilled my tongue with gusto,
until the oily overflow reminded me
of the circumstances. the dashboard clock showed
four minutes had passed, if i remembered
the entry time right. a huge multipiped fan blew warm
air on the car that glistened in the unbearable
light of yet another hot summer afternoon.
the traffic light turned green and he
routinely put the car in drive.
at the exit the cashier lazily
waved goodbye.

2001-08-26