FISH, FROM THE OTHER SIDE

When I dream of them
these prematurely pressed fossils
expelled from the sea
with no way to recover their loss
in a change that's still shocking

and when I read carefully
their skeleton rhythms
perfect as a sonnet describing how roads
make divergent tracks
to lead us astray

or when they try to explain to me
what preceded the dream
they are staring back at themselves
to see their own clarity
and blood gushes again through their gills
the basic colour of earth
so as not to betray the secret of silence
otherwise they might lose their will to return
to that natural state
before the image changed
from the world that had been their own
because all that is natural was before

so in me
the borders of sensibility retreat
from the scarlet flame
of what needed to be said
though it extingushed itself bodily

aphasia becomes all encompassing
the dead silence, or in other words
death is within reach.

Maybe memory deceives me deliberately
experience is not the same as recall
maybe dream and dreamer
are a mirage

maybe those who called on me
to give them back the sea
at least in a word
are no longer fish
maybe they are remains
of a long abandoned hunt
or of the orgy about to happen
in the vast seas
of this world and you are the seducer

all the same
I still go on measuring time with my dreams
I recognise them
in something quite personal
and I abandon the habit of life.

Translated by Ilija Casule and Thomas Shapcott

© Katica Kulavkova, 2001-2007.
All rights reserved.