Miroslav Antic - Bori se…

(Savršenstvo vatre - M.Antić)

CLXXV

You are hurting me, my body, you are hurting me.
You are loving me, stuffed fool, don’t love, love me.

I’m plucking pedals of light, so that death burns you less.
I’m flying like a century. Like spring above you flow.

You are hurting me. Not getting over me. Making me sick.
I make you sick. I hate you. I am not getting over you.

I burn you. And you are denuding me. Burning me. And I denude you.
I love you. Create you. Do not love. I love you.

I am tearing off chains of time. Oh, trust me, cannons of hatred
will bang into us, and in us it will grow.

But will the sea of jealousy heal? Beg me.
Open up. Fight. I am fighting. Do not get over me.

Mika Antic … Jer će uvek posle jedne kiše biti nama jedno lepo sunce…

When the sun shines, we cry like crazy,
because, always, after a sun, we get a terrible rain.

When it rains, we sing like crazy,
because, always, after a rain, we get a beautiful sun.

After good, always bad comes,
because nothing better ever came after the best.

After bad, good must come,
because nothing worse ever came after the worst.

Jer će uvek posle jedne kiše biti nama jedno lepo sunce…

Kad sunce sija
mi plačemo kao ludi,
jer će uvek posle jednog sunca
biti nama jedna strašna kiša.

Kad kiša pada
mi pevamo kao ludi,
jer će uvek posle jedne kiše
biti nama jedno lepo sunce.

Posle dobrog uvek dođe loše,
jer nikad nam ništa bolje
nije bilo iza najboljeg.

Posle lošeg mora doći dobro,
jer nikad nam ništa gore
nije bilo iza najgoreg.

Miroslav Antić - Besmrtna pesma

 

 

AN IMMORTAL POEM

 

 

I
If you hear: I died
and I was dear to your heart
Maybe something inside you will also suddenly turn gray…
Have you ever at all thought about the true meaning of life?

Like snow on your palm, childhood melting away in you.
Worries…. Are there any worries? Sorrows… Are there any sorrows?
On the ladder of imagination boldly climb up to your youth.

That beautiful but enticing rainbow is waiting for you over there.

And live your life.
Live it to the very last drop. Don’t nibble days like a mouse.
Chew the air with all your teeth.
Run faster than the winds and the birds. Overtake them all.

Because, in the end, nothing lasts for long.

Smiling faces, in some mirrors, all of a sudden become wrinkled.
Unexpected: at some corner, a tear ambushes you.
Troubles come tiptoeing. Years turn grayer.
All of a sudden, the world, while you’re walking
becomes more and more narrow
And your laughter quieter and quieter and somehow distorted

Therefore, live, but completely!
…

II

Really, have you sometimes thought about what does it mean to die?

And where in fact does a man disappear?

What is it that takes him away forever?

Don’t go to cemeteries.

You won’t understand a thing.

Cemeteries are the darkest fair and an ugly theatre.

You are not meant for such theatres, with no hope and fire,
the theatres of dried up tears, where graveyard rules reign,
where there are no quarrels and songs, and no applause.

And the end is known in advance.

When playing riots and your formlessness,
don’t you ever wish to secretly reach new dimensions of sense
in neighboring futures?

I’ll explain it to you one day. If you find me there.

You know what I’ll do: I’ll brake your toy,
the one called pain,
if you get up the courage.

I’m not lying to you - I invent
things that have to exist,
but you haven’t discovered them yet, because you haven’t even looked for them.

Remember: reality is more real if you add unreal to it.

You will know me by silence. The eternals don’t talk.

To outwit the wisdom, learn how to listen.
Great answers show themselves to you

After countless births and some petty deaths,
when you realize one day that all that breathing doesn’t make a life,

Really, come to me,
to touch you with light and turn you into thought.

Even the farthest future has its future that carries inside the voice of its future

And there are no empty worlds.

The thing that we are not aware of is not nonexistence
but existence without us.

III

If you hear: I died
here’s what it will really mean:

Thousands of colorful fish will be fluttering through my eye.
And the ground will hide me. And the weed will hide me.

And, in the meanwhile,
I’ll be flying high… High

Remember: there are no limits, but only temporary limits.

I’ll be sailing above you at downs. Downwind, slippery like silk.
I’ll be showing you horizons, outlines of rising era
and future sights with beauty of invisible wings.
…

I’ll be resting from unimportant, like galactic flocks,
that have grown together by pulsation ongoing in their souls.

I’ll be resting from unimportant, like deep forests,
that have grown together by branches into dense embraces.

I’ll be resting from unimportant like big birds,
that have grown together by wings and weaved a net in the entire sky.

I’ll be resting from unimportant like great loves,
that had grown together by lips, even before they met.

Do you really think that my hand, knee, or head,
could, tomorrow, turn into clay,
willow’s root
and grass?

Do you really think that a small secret, or a silly fear,
could, tomorrow, turn into silence,
darkness,
and dust?

You know I come from somewhere from the stars.
I’m all made out of light.

Nothing in me will
extinguish or shorten

I will only, as simple as that, at one random dawn,
return to my distant Sun, with gold in my eyes.

Because, I was meant for theatres
with plenty of heart and zeal, theatres of laughter and tears,
where there is no order, where there is quarreling,
and singing, and screaming, and applauses.
And the end is not known in advance.

Being punished for my every thought, let alone my every deed,
I’m suspected of tenderness
And found guilty for not extinguishing love with hatred
but with new, bigger love
and I don’t extinguish life with death,
but with something differently alive.

The last borders of infinity are just the beginning of more endless.

He who lasts longer than more lasting knows not for short term knowledge.

Never torture yourself with the question: how to survive,
But: how not to die after the final death.

IV

If you hear: I died
Don’t worry. In every century somebody mistakes me for
the tired and old.

There’s nowhere as many people as in one man.

There is nowhere as many differences as in the same things.

If you scratch through the spaces, you’ll dig me out of the wind.
I’m in the water, in the stones, in every dusk and dawn.

Being humanly versatile doesn’t mean being dehumanized

I am dividable by all sorts of things, but not destructible as well.

And all those miraculous states and renewal of myself
are nothing but a maelstrom
dull,
persistent,
long.

Do you know what are prophecies?
Molds of past occurrences and their breathlessness that chases itself around.

So why say goodbye? What are we sorry for?
I have lived a magnificent life
because I really knew how to do it
If you hear: I died,
- don’t believe it.
Because it’s something I don’t know how to do.

Love is the only air I’ve ever breathed
and laughter the only language in the world that I understand

I have just dropped by on this earth, to give you a wink.
To leave something behind
like a fluttering trace.

Therefore, don’t be sad.
The only thing I care for is
to remain silly in your eyes and strangely dear to your heart.
At night, when you look up to the sky,
you give me a wink too
let it be a secret.

In spite of gray days,
when you see a comet turning the horizon red,
remember: its me
still silly flying and living.

~ ~ ~

Miroslav Antic - Pesma za nas dvoje

A Poem For The Two Of Us

I know,
it must be like that:
the two of us have never met,
although we keep searching for each other
because of her happiness
and my happiness.
Drunk rain whips and strikes,
wind pulls willows’ hair out.

Where am I going?
Which town should I stop by?

The day is spilled over opaque fields.

I’m dragging around two empty eyes
staring into faces of passerbys.
Who should I ask, hungry and wet,
why have we never met?

Or it already happened?
Missed a step?
Maybe she came all the way next to me.
But I,
stopped by a pub, bitter,
and she
not knowing - passed by.

I don’t know.
We’ve been around the world
in passion, crazy
even,
and we missed each other for a step.

Yes, it must’ve been like that….

Miroslav Antic - Govor

The Talk

I consider it a big weakness and I would really be
depressed if
I would have to explain to you, in plain language,
with words suspicious, raw, eaten up and useless
all this that I feel.
There are everyday, completely ordinary things,
that are a secret to many people.

“The strongest door is the one that is wide open,
according to an ancient Tibetan script.

There is a talk that someone will discover tomorrow, but
maybe nobody will even try to discover it.
But you must try already to embrace it with thoughts.
Because that is the language of meanings, and not dialect of names.

There are cultures of gestures, breathing and sight.
There is time of times and area of areas.
There is beauty of beauty. There is truth about truth,
reality of real, will of will and power of power.
There is movement of movement, thinking of thinking,
… there is also love of love, my son.

I dare to use words less and less often, because
they always have a different meaning to what I want them to mean.
They are further and further from the talk and I find it hard to understand them
in the noises of infinity.

Tissue gets tattooed by tissue with heritage marks. That is
what my silence with you is like tonight. Layer by
layer, shell by shell, mucus by mucus, fatigue
among us, civilizations of protozoans, eras of
viruses, cells of stones and air, and skin stuffed
with water and eternity.
It’s as if we were communicating in all
times, now in this moment, in which
we’ve found each other.

Instead of writing to you, I am writing to Snow White and Alice.
I’m sending telegrams to Pinocchio and The Little Prince.
I call Jonathan Livingston seagull and Cinderella on the phone
at least once a day. But there’s no answer.
Means that they think of us.
Those who know the signs of thoughts, rarely
use spoken language.
People respect each other with words, but love each other by silence.

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