MAKE A POETIC IMAGE OF THE SKY
FIRST IMAGE
Time to turn away from the sea
it moans like some lost soul
and it gargles in its throat even the shorelines
and their grittiness.
My senses respond, sea-foam still jarrs me
- there are some odours that break through
sea-walls of words
that float like salt
and need to be touched, to be seen
before any description is possible.
On the sea-floor we abandon life
as we know it, even if we can see it.
The sea floor, it seems, for all its predictability
is never the same. It makes us uncertain.
The sky, though,
that has a calm truth
stretching not just over me
but like a helpless image
it is reflected in every body of water.
Its body and face are encompassed
by lakes and ocean it repeats itself
endlessly and recklessly
joining and re-joining.
Who knows, one day it may seek revenge
upon anything smaller than itself
it may yearn for measurement, it may
demand to be named, to be squeezed
into something else and raise its sight upwards
so that the sky which is all reflection
will discover its own escape.
SECOND IMAGE
Alone, abandoned
like me my fear is abandoned, I decide
to appeal without prejudice
to this presence that persists up there
part of my life.
That is me, I address it directly.
This is my first sign
of intimacy, though my speech
is porous and full of gaping holes.
The sky replies and out in the open
it releases its cluster of lights and its wounds.
That is because both of us are sleepless
at midnight. It's best to fathom
our destiny, not to touch or be touched.
THIRD IMAGE: FIRST FRAME
Clouds: violet and shapeless. The invention
of a background
sky is a deviation from one's self
because sky, finally, can only be imagined
if you close your eyes.
You continue to look into open space
there
seeking form
offering form.
THIRD IMAGE: SECOND FRAME
A white bird enters the frame
this is a violation. It is uncertainty
therefore it simplifies the impression.
It is crude and clear - like a lyric.
Something fierce is needed
- claw, beaks, the swoop of a predator
or at least a bit of wind
tugging there in the background. Foveal painting
or pelting rain, cooling things off
easing expectations
or full of lightning strikes
to prepare you for a real storm.
You need to have a feeling for celestial matters
as well.
You hope for something brutal
you have no objection
to discovering the sky from its dark side,
you want to take a look close-up
and then you can fall asleep.
THIRD IMAGE: THIRD FRAME
Quite beyond reason it casts its shadow
outside time and beyond language.
Warned by the lightning that joins it
in brutal flash verticals to the plants
the question that insists itself
invokes no pity.
Fair enough:
from this perspective it offers
only one cheek, round and thick
and with a disturbingly wide mouth,
the mouth of the sky.
Translated by Ilija Casule and Thomas Shapcott
