HAWK AND SHADOW

A hawk flies in the summer sky
under the unreadable calligraphy of the zodiac.
At first in wide and abrupt circles
like hidden thoughts
then smaller and smaller, obsessively,
to stop at the native ground.
In spite of everything else still turning
it finds its imagined axis.

The hawk's shadow descends in circles
to the earth. There sources spring forth
like forbidden loves
and man yields to thirst
even when he denies it.

The hawk's echo-shadow recircles in your dreams
me-hawk, me-hawk, need you-hawk...

Remember the moment when it cast itself over you?
It bounced without a sound off the sky
faithful to hawk and infinity
and you could feel it all over
without sighting it.

You remember that unworldly moment.
If disloyalty to it should begin,
like a self-indulgent mirage,

the splitting away of soul from form
or should memory unclog its demonic eddy
maybe it'll settle in you, like an illusion.

That bird lulls itself to sleep over the cross of
infinity
far above the dirt where futility nails us down
like life.

You look always at the ground
to see what's happening in the sky.
The vanished form, the forsaken man
these hover above your mind
and you turn entranced and forlorn
the shadow is cast so near
you are not left with enough space
to approach yourself
to fold your wings.

Translated by Ilija Casule and Thomas Shapcott

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