A Woman’s Letter
I don’t want to be obedient and tame.
Coddled like a cat. Faithful like a dog.
With a belly to my teeth, hands in the dough,
Face covered with flour, my heart a cinder
And his hand on my ass.
I don’t want to be a welcome flag at his door,
Nor the guardian snake under his threshold,
Neither the snake nor Eve from Genesis.
I don’t want to pace between the door and the window,
To listen hard and be able to distinguish
Footsteps from night-sounds.
I don’t want to follow the leaden movement of the watch-hands,
Nor see falling stars
For him to gore me drunkenly like an elephant.
I don’t want to be sewn with needlepoint
To the family portrait
Next to the fireplace with balled up children,
In the garden with puppy children,
And I the shade tree,
And I the winter landscape,
A statue under the snow.
In a pleated wedding dress
I’ll fly to heaven.
Alleluia! Alleluia!
I don’t want a bridegroom.
I want gray hair, a hump and a basket
To go roaming in the woods,
Picking strawberries and dry twigs.
With my whole life behind me,
The smile of that boy,
So dear and irreplaceable.
Translated from the Serbian by Charles Simic
Twilight Metaphysics
It’s too late to teach my heart anything.
The alphabet of suffering
I already know by heart. I test it live.
Life knows more than the Sybil.
Time has stopped. What bliss is there in flowing?
Reality resembles a moth-eaten sweater —
This is poetry.
Life limps like a crippled girl
Who hopes to marry well
Even though her heart is scarred with memories.
Biography of fire and water.
These are the worthless and painful reserves
With which one starts on a long, uncertain journey
Over one’s own private homeland
On which every foot steps on in boots.
Older than Cain is every suffering,
Even this one which like a cousin from far away
Has come for a three-day visit
And stayed, made herself comfortable,
Took up all the room —
And says nothing about leaving!
The time of miracles is behind us.
Time of tower-building,
Heavenly and earthly gardens
From schoolbooks and poems.
The so-called Greek luck awaits us
Where we will never arrive.
Therefore, if you can,
Water the flowers and the heart
From the same pitcher.
Time doesn’t dry up,
Nor make steps quicker, as they say.
Time swallows its own images
As if they were its children.
Get it through your head, throwing a blanket
Over your face won’t help you.
Even if underneath it a dear body waits for you.
No use stuffing wax in your ears either.
The siren’s song will be a part of your scream.
Those born happy and less happy
Die before their own body dies.
They wear their faces like other people’s clothes
As in paintings of Hieronimus Bosch.
The one who wrote the sky, the earth and the sea,
And above all, snow and dreams,
The phases of the moon, the color of leaves, our faces,
Seems distant and cold like the North Pole.
Don’t call that nihilism or blasphemy.
With wrong syntax and bad diction
Was how the world was created —
So many apples of divisiveness
Have been tossed between us,
One of them will roll even at your feet,
Perhaps, just as you’ve brought in the harvest,
Added up the accounts,
Thrown your hands over your head
Chasing rings of smoke and reveries.
Dead-born will be your wishes.
Your every hope will be a widow.
And as for love, not enough
To spread on a slice of bread.
Translated from the Serbian by Charles Simic
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