Dépanneur

On the way back from the (maybe
metaphoric) market, your arms
are monkey-long, your shoulders
pulled to the ground by laden bags

(the endless recycling of matter),
and the street just a little too
long on this winter afternoon,
half-sinking into its shadow.

Maybe you're walking and thinking
of other market days (always
abreast with the morning sun)
when others gladly pulled your weight,

or maybe you are just dodging
the sidewalk traps of slushy snow
(that right boot has been capricious),
under the weak glow of street light.

But then you happen to look up,
and George -- his face a question mark --
in white overalls, through the glass
lifts two thumbs above the apples,

waiting for an answer, and not
maybe but certainly your smile
lets it all go, waves it away,
and buries it under the snow.


George says the rubber band keeps his sleeve from getting too dirty.

Doing Laundry with Beethoven

It's the little motions -

stretching an arm to peg
a long-sleeved shirt on the line,

leaning against the wall
to let someone pass,

lowering the kettle
silently to the stove

(Adagio from "Emperor"
hanging in the air) -

that carry the weight
of the day and prove
that we are here, now.

Words to Send

I pick them like my father picks
vegetables at the market:
he walks, and looks, and touches,
smells, and knocks (for a watermelon),
then purchases the best offer,
hands full of morning goodness.

One of the traditionally
empty-handed, I at least
pick and gather words, carefully,
those abandoned, long-faced words
left for later, then forgotten;
I assemble them and send them

to addresses while we're still here,
and make those who've forgotten
remember.

Nuclear Arms

"... as he went to join the nuclear
arms protest in Amsterdam in 1981"
I read, and was momentarily stuck
in the image of two strong, unhesitant

arms, with subatomic powers of enfolding
all my protons, waltzing with my electrons,
and electrifying all my neutrons; arms
gifted with the force of fusion, gathering

all my elementary particles,
keeping them from speeding away
in opposite directions, anchoring
them in a here. Arms that could

annihilate my entire population,
in a blink, on a whim, if they would.


(written during the longest night of the year, as the full Moon enters a total eclipse, and the winter starts: Dec 21, 3:14 AM)

Of Winds and Antelopes

"In the silence, the flag flapping, the rope hitting the mast, were more mournful than any music" (Harry Mulisch, The Assault).

(For Marijana)


The saddest sound I ever heard was the wind in a bottle.
It happened one muffled afternoon full of restless clouds,
While we stood, two figures pinned down by the casual sky,
On top of the hill, turning north south east and west
Among the freshly dug graves, glittering in the pale June sun,
Above the city.

We carried gallons of water in plastic Pepsi bottles
From the far fountain (the one in our sector had run dry)
To keep the flowers fresh, turning the earth around our mound to mud.
Then we settled under the willow-tree on her left,
And looked down the hill to the lower levels of the site
Where a woman in black swept around her mound with a small broom.

Beyond, bulldozers opened new lots, pushing the edges,
And beyond them, purple hills ran down to the river,
Rolling now then and forever, slow and unsurprised.
And it was then that the north wind which came with the river
Slipped into our plastic bottles and started to sing low,
So low that it seemed to be sinking underground,

A long, low sound sadder than anything said or unsaid.

I looked to where we had lit the candles behind her cross
(It's never easy to keep them burning on top of that hill)
And saw a small wonder: the yellow wax melting
Into an antelope running quickly, faster than the wind,
Lighter than the beginning or the end of light.

Lady Lazarus

In the rush-hour bustle
of the metro, she held
a white bunny, gingerly
pressed against her chest,
its pink nose quivering
softly into her black
leather jacket. No one
seemed to notice or care,
her coy smile and the bunny's
blatant whiteness lost
in the post-work haze.

Imagine pulling
the security brake,
and yelling, along with the
clanging of the alarm,
and telling them all
(Lady Lazarus of
the Metro) to look,
just look, and they would see

a small huddled miracle,
a touch of magic
straight from the black hat,
visiting for a second,
gone at the next station.

In*spiration

Inside, something snapped,
splintered. A long asystole,
a mid-breath arrest, and
a shock of nothingness - then
a dazzling moment of
syncopated truth.

I finally passed you by
and walked on without
turning, my glance
relaxing into other
lives, my rigor mortis
melting in the sun.

An inspiration
opening the lungs,
injecting the eye with
the trace of a clue,
shifted minutely
and inimitably

the birds, the trees, the sky.
All just mine, all new.

In Absentia

Today would be your 69th birthday.
You missed the last four of them
And you will miss all the rest of them.
You went before you got old:
A good thing, perhaps -- you
Always feared the unkindness
Of age.

What could I tell you about
The time that has passed
Without you? The usual
Succession of suns and rains,
The unsurprise of hurt and balm,
The triviality of a minor
Chord change.

You missed so little and
So much. I grew, without you.
Other people witness
What I am becoming;
I smile for others, and tell them
Words I would have kept
For you.

I would have loved to have
You a little longer.
I could have shown you an
Older me; I could have loved you
From the depth of four bonus years.
I could have been what you always
Were for me.

Instead, I am here,
On this page, feeling your
Absence and conjuring
Your presence. My smile
Is yours, and my words
The ones you taught me.
Happy birthday,

From the one you held
Close as long as you could.

This was Me

За Тамару, која почиње

ТРАГАЊЕ

Открићу ти једну тајну:
Одувек о теби снивам.
У чаробне нити танке
Мојих снова расплетених
Заплићеш се врло вешто
И тајне ми шаљеш знаке.

С тобом ловим Млади Месец
Кроз поноћне шумске крике;
С тобом пратим Јужни Ветар
И гусарска тражим блага;
С тобом јурим Добре Виле
Вештице и Чаробњаке.

Срећем те на сваком углу
Зачараног лавиринта;
Видим те у сваком перу
Жар-птициног златног крила;
Сваки нови светионик
Управља ка теби зраке.

Да ти певам ову песму
Ни на јави нећу стати;
Једино још увек не знам:
Хоћу ли те препознати?

(1993)

Approximation:

For Tamara, who is beginning

THE SEARCH

Do you want to know a secret? -
I have always dreamt about you.
You have knit yourself with magic
Into unfurled threads of my dreams
Where you sit and smile and whisper
Sending me your secret signals.

You go with me on the Moon hunt
Through the echoes of black forests;
You go with me and the South Wind
In the search of pirate treasures;
You go with me on the wild chase
After Fairies, Hags, and Wizards.

You are there at every corner
Of the spellbound maze and riddle;
I can see you in each feather
Of the golden-wingèd flame-bird;
Every lighthouse sends its searchlight
Without fail in your direction.

I won't cease to sing you this song
Even in the waking hours,
But I wonder: will I ever
Know your face among the others?

(1993)

Auto-recycling

"... when the human engine waits/ Like a taxi throbbing waiting"
(T.S. Eliot)


The motor was stalling,
dying, beyond repair.
It was a good motor
but it had had its run;
it ran for decades but
couldn't remember
any more what got it
started. What did it
run on? Or for?

The hiatus after the final
halt was only seconds
(centuries) long; then,
a pair of strong legs -
fit, sinewy, ready -
hit the ground, and
started. Stepping
confidently, (from the
heel, to the ball of the

foot, to the toes) in a
straight line, with an
elastic bounce, they
take on the rhythm
of a new drive, self-
combusting into the
zest of a new personal
velocity, overtaking
old landmarks, cruising

the city with ease
and suaveness, generated
by a brand-new
well-oiled
self-ignited
motor.

Distortions of Renaissance Pragmatism

The world must be peopled,
Says Benedick (to himself)
Before Beatrice enters
(Act II, Scene iii).

And so I do -- without much
ado. Except, I don't
people it with people,
really. A friend called it

Slavic animism once
(it was the summer of
bare feet, long words
and short nights).

What it is, actually,
is an exercise in
exploding loneliness
into a population of animas,

protective and personalized,
sending signals and
reasserting the rightness
of this moment in this

your life, reflecting
your defragmented
you, showing it
in the light.

A comforting mirage
of external meaning
revealed in the
quotidian to the observant --


this is certainly
not what Benedick
had in mind when he
set to people the world


with Beatrice. Too
metaphysical, that.
And, ultimately,
profoundly lonely.

Black Sandals

If my mother had been Asian
She would have probably looked
Like the woman on the metro
A few weeks ago.
It was something in her
Wide temples, it was
Her short black hair,
Her small, clever hands, and
The intelligent fingers
With modestly long
Fingernails, but most of all,


It was the straps of her
Black sandals around her
Dainty pale-skin ankles
Set off nicely by medium-
High heels that spelled
My mother silently
From the floor of the
Metro car.

Kelebia-Kelebija: Entering the Country from the North

10 million years ago
this was all underwater,
this stretch of fields
was home to
fishes, shells and crabs
not dreaming of trains
carrying dreamers glued
to windows across the oceans
of wheat.


this drained sea-bottom
is endlessly the same
north and south
east and west,
gives me nothing
to go by, doesn't
translate into borders
or countries or allegiances,
it teases, rightfully,


until, a few hundred meters
down the railway line from
kelebia, two words sprayed
on the wall of a crumbling
railroad house sail slowly
in and out of my view,
fitting easily into the
landscape of stray poppies
as we dock into kelebija:


VOLIM TE.
and then i know
exactly where i am
and what i am doing.
like a fish in the water.

Breathing in a Dark Room

Wait for it
thoughtlessly
unpreemptively
just an honest
wait
arms open wide
for the right time
even if it feels
late.

Just wait
(that’s what you’re
trained to do),
in the gathering
night
let the void
find you
enfold you
claim you.

Wait
(not out of tiredness
or cluelessness),
choose to unwind
the impetus, implode
the surface cumulus
into a perfect
nothingness,
only yours,

(Like floating
in water, face
up,
like breathing
in a dark
room,
like hearing
the world
disappear),

Wait.

Botched Heritage

botch (v.) [from ME bocchen, to mend] = to foul up, to bungle, to put together in a makeshift way



The day I woke up to find a hole
In my thick blue cardigan,
I knew I was in trouble.

My fingers are short and stocky
(Like my father’s; I have his knees too):
They are clever at blind-typing
But stall at pedestrian tasks.
So when I fetched my sewing needle
(The only one I own, slightly bent)
And the spool of thinned-out black thread
(Which I’ve had for decades, possibly),
I stepped into an unknown zone,
Pitifully incompetent.

Like a diver in a helmet,
Trudging heavy on dry land,
I was stumbling with each stitch,
I was losing thread and mission
In the narrow needle’s eye.
And all the while I knew, I felt
That this was a betrayal
Of my grandmother’s fingers,
Dancing delicately, playfully
For years, for decades, in pairs and patterns.

All the hours and patience and
Tenderness she sewed into it,
The Princess of Crocheting,
(Dreaming of children’s children perhaps),
All the cleverness she trained
In her fingertips, and willed
To the next batch -- evolved
(In the new millennium)
Into this earnest, but clumsy,
Botching of heritage.

Species Vulnerabilis

We walk around wearing
our vulnerabilities,
blinking in shyness
with eyes averted
carefully, from insecurities
of others, too much like ours.

Harelips, club feet, lazy eyes,
birthmarks, pockmarks, dumbo ears,
thick skin, thin skin, wrinkled skin,
voices, murmurs, memories,
words unsaid, and words outsaid –
a collection of wounds

we wrap around us and
carry, paradoxically,
like a protective shield,
a comforter, a motherly
armour, lulling us to our
baby sleep, hoping that those

we meet along the way won’t
shake us awake too rudely.

Choking on a Cherry

While you were choking on a cherry,
In the middle of a dappled country road,
I was twelve, and terrified
And stood at a distance, like
A block of stone, watching
The woman we were visiting
Pound your bent back with urgency.

(Grandmother told me how one summer
You almost choked on a teaspoonful
Of honey trickling slowly down your
Baby throat, and all she could do was
Watch)

When the cherry was propelled out
And you breathed back into life,
I too was catapulted from the
Dark nether regions of possible
Childhood tragedies into a fairly
Standard untraumatized adolescence,
Ushered in by a breath of relief –

Relief which, in retrospect, was only
Stalling for time, and blew up into
Smithereens, dispersed forever
When, twenty years later, I received
The news of your death, final
And irreversible, holding no
Hidden last-minute reprieves.

Winter Nocturno

3:30 a.m. and no moon
In sight. The windows in the alley
Gape unresponsive, the stiletto-roofs
Cut into the night-gray sky.


At 3:30 a.m. the back yard
Is massive. Under the expanse
Of white, it is a stage poised for
The next act, virgin-crisp under the lights.


Is this it? This patch of moonless
Sky, this plot of frozen ground,
These paper clouds, these dreaming
People whose names I don't know --


Is this it? Where my show will
Play out? Is it, at this random hour,
Already playing out? Is it, from out
There, looking back at me,


Wondering the same things? Well,
We are at least awake here together:
It must be a good sign; it must mean
I should now learn my lines.

The Girl with the Short Hair

(Za Gordanu)


She is back,
The girl with the short hair.
She doesn’t say where she has been
Or how long she is staying,
She only waves and beckons
From across the street,
Points at her open sandals
And summer tan,
Laughs with her
Forest-honey eyes.

Her hand plays with
The bristle of her hair
Uncovered by hat,
Her long bare arms,
Like half-moons,
In a magic swish
Pull a screen of indigo
Across the sky
Sprinkling a winking
Star or two.
She whistles of far-away places,
And squints to spot
The fanned-out horizons
Through lowered lashes,
Trailing behind her
Gurgly children, brass bands,
And cat gangs,
Ignoring the ringing phones
In empty booths
Along the way.

“It’s me,”
(She doesn’t have to say,)
“Where have you been?”
And suddenly the surprise
Of my own absence
Unfurls like a scarf of grief,
And I have no answer
But open my arms
And “I am back,”
(I don’t have to say).

The Princess and the Clown

(For David)

She asked me for a red-nosed clown --
I turned my pockets and I found:
A few holes, a few crumbs, and
A vast emptiness.


My words had fled without a trace,
Her outstretched hand demanded
Grace, and so we stood without
A sound, in awkwardness.



I could not tell her I was
The same: a little girl with stars
In her eyes, and the world at her
Feet, my father's princess.



No tricks up my sleeve, and a long
Way to go, I left her there sad and
Small, and went (hoping to return)
In search of readiness.