CIRCULUS AMOROSIS

You did not notice me.
I recognized you at once. But,
who was forsaking happiness?
Who's was that
pelvis with its back of queen
and mistress who turned away? Who
was not leaving you indifferent?
I didn't know.

There was something unnatural:
a difference in time, a mistake in dreams.
Duality of a woman.

In one hand you held a comic paper
or was it a weekend novel, with the other
you were comforting her, your worldly wisdom
did not enable you to conceal
her foreign speech, the cultured pronunciation.

You must notice, it means life is opening
in front of you like a carnival. Orange,
wild cyclamen, the premiere.
You must notice, else you have no objective
reason, only a motive, an emotional longing.

I imagine some other Procne or her sister Philomela^*
some other Semiramide or the servant

Oh, there's the bait of anonymous women
and the poison of trivial destinies.
If only you would've disappeared altogether
so that I don't have to hear
so I don't have to repeat the "voice of the weaver"
or the shriek of the beam, the password of the severed
tongue, hers-mine
hers
mine.

---

* Philomela. in Greek mythology, weaved on a loom her story about the adultery with Tereus, Procne’s husband.

Translated by Ilija Casule and Thomas Shapcott

© Katica Kulavkova, 2001-2007.
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