Aleksandar Bečanović: All apologies: God bless America
| All the Scrupulousness If one heads for the wide path that leads to the sea, there at its foot, he will be able to watch the waves losing their strength and becoming but a reflection of the sun and spume spreading over the sand. That is nothing but a plain picture: things a hundred times seen soon become a disappointment. However, the observer still must descend, aware that sentiment must be avoided. So thinks the one who examines one’s own instructions: all the scrupulousness can’t change anything. The configuration seems sealed: wherever one goes, the sequel remains the same. The lucky ones can call it Ithaca, others can’t recognize it as their homeland, still others feel that the next morning it will again be cold before leaving. Then the breath warps, leaves get stamped down into the ground, a shower may erase the footprints. Carmilla: Gothic Poem Down halls lit up with candles, undisturbed, a nocturnal apparition strides. The moon proclaims: the countess is alone. It is cold, as if it were a time of frost. As if in a grave. Tall, she moves, although the oval mirror does not recognize her. There is no greater secret than that which escapes our view. The unrepentant figure sways past old portraits and stone walls: trailing mist and a desperate scream. The castle echoes long with mortal cries: inviting red worms to another feast. A smale quivers on her pale face: a thin line of blood trickles from her hot lips. Nothing Discernable Nothing can be discerned on muddled pages. What the author once proclaims illegible, takes a turn in a different direction. Birds cannot grasp that scattered noise with their voices. They need some time, just like the switchman at the railway station. Every touch outside the text is so cold. Only that is needed to start again the debate on the écriture, on its ability not only to surprise with a call, but with a gesture that exceeds the usual bon ton; it goes from hand to hand, but holds on nowhere. Like a root that, once pulled out, can’t grow any more, but can still be a remedy. A crystal morning afterwards directs attention to a thousand ordinary things that meet everyone with the same indifference. But the arrangement in the room is as random as the spread of shadows. Going to sleep in the morning looks a bit like dragging out: sleep then appears as something that has lost its value. Nothing is discernable outside. A poet can say that everything is quiet, but isn’t his voice present then: aporia is drawling around corners and comes to be the sediment on anyone’s quill. It is time to give release, time for trembling to stop. If now parataxis joins the withered landscape, what will be the direction of the path that cuts the image in two? In this space, movement is distortion. Trivial is every concern that isn’t based on looking aside. Wanting comes from everyone’s incapacity to be totally composed: the concentration of presence, and then dragging out and prolongation. Because, what approaches cannot last long and be regular. There’s just enough space to join the middle with the middle: the beginning and the end are duplicates, but still: they are - out of reach. The manuscript is morose at a profound moment; however, every distance dramatized in the light should be terminated. The machine is ticking away, just like the clock on the wall: workout of signs in the view range. Signals and a footnote. Sign poles near roads, a hedge. How long it all shall last hardly anyone can know, now that shadows make a charmed circle from which there is no way out. And so: the route is shaped with utmost attention, but it is difficult to avoid strays. Is that all identified in the écriture that comes from the other end: surprising, unexpected, closed. Each sheet is important, no doubt. Each page is like a death sentence. And everything ends. Ends, because the poem comes to an end. Pesoa: On Four Addresses So, I drew the line. With a sharp stroke. As always, the whiteness waited for me. I could feel my legs inexorably going numb: the night was lurking in the branches of nearby trees. I stretch my body and get up: everything must rest, everything must be distant so that the persona can finally unwind. In the room when I stop writing, long stillness comes. Things give an impression of familiarity, afterwards. From the room I’m gone: my manuscript is a thin line of withdrawal. The architecture of the heart is the same as the architecture of a city: Few paths lead inside, many of them lead outside. Besides, the streetlights in Lisbon are cold. The subject is a small clerk, a dying instance, a mandatory persona: written traces remain after him, afterwards. Afterwards I can imagine you somewhere in the center of town, near the crossroads where cars are noisier than usual, putting a swiftly-sealed letter in the mailbox with a careful gesture. All Apologies: God Bless America God bless America its meadows in Montana, tired old men of the South who still remember the vast manors where workers bent while the sun beat down on their backs, its movie screens that are the only ones that still merrily embrace the entire world, John Carpenter, who was the first to surf in space, its myths that are narrative consolation for stumbling tropes, the High Sierras that strangely extend in twilight before a stranger who watches them as Ulysses watched Ithaca, John Wayne, who is its metonym in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance because: freedom is the purest violence of all, all quiet Christmas dinners at family tables, snowy fields in Connecticut, its books that perceived the small man as a being that keeps his emotions to himself, because that’s the hardest way, Edgar Allan Poe, because he realized that there is no greater metaphysic than the horror story, its romantic comedies that are the only remaining way of expressing Plato’s beliefs and therefore a moving proof that the idea of love has not been lost - everything else is sex, The Byrds, who took over the words of the Preacher, Walt Whitman, who wrote about the new landscape in the verses of the Bible, young scouts, country singers who ride together into the twilight knowing that there is the essence of the West, its meadows in Wisconsin, Johnny Cash, the loner, Christian fundamentalists, because this is the last of all times, its funeral marches and ceremonies, bodies enwrapped in flags, white trash, because in those little houses, through pain and misery, true redemption will come one day true humbleness will be found, true faith, Kristin Hersh, the only survivor of the great muses, Niagara Falls, that people watch from their marital beds as if they were a wonder of the world even though the view is nothing but a little unusual, Paul Schrader, because: of the marvelous path which brought him to film, its ships that brought voyagers from dying Europe, settlers who sensed that in this country the battle would be fought to preserve the power of the community, The Chisholm Trail, because such an ample country had to be fed, Frances Farmer and Marilyn Monroe, because their sorrow was greater than their beauty, the town of Goshen, Indiana, because: ‘In the best of the land make thy father and brethren to dwell; in the land of Goshen let them dwell: (Genesis, 47, 6), Howard Hawks, because America is essentialized in his movies, which means that it will never be lost, Hawks’ professionals who realized that work is more important than emotions, Leigh Brackett, because she wrote well, like a man, its whiteness in Alaska, Ezra Pound, who went to Italy to remain American, save the American Constitution and create Cantos (after all, it was in order that human history was written by a poet, the last of the line), its churches in the province where people gather as children of God and the tender voice of the preacher rises like a fresh breeze over the river at summer sunset, Raymond Carver who intuited that sense rests in almost invisible points, its quotations, because quotation is the only reality, Monument Valley, Will Oldham, his acoustic lament from the darkness, motels that refresh from the dust to give the occasional passer-by new strength, all sleepless in Baltimore, all sleepless in Seattle, because love is a design of destiny, Seattle, the town where grunge emerged from rage and now ends up embracing tradition, General Lee, because he realized how great was his defeat, Dutch Calvinists, even though they forbid their children to watch movies, Thomas Pynchon, who entangled his text just to remain unknown and so prove that écriture is not knowledge but a game of hiding in an already enormous labyrinth, William Peter Blatty, who didn’t wait for private revelation on top of the Empire State Building, but went directly to Maryland, its meadows in Alabama, corn fields in Michigan, Bruce Springsteen, because after every hard day he manages to find a reason to believe, frozen rivers near Boston, The Residents who would have been The Beatles if the Liverpool four hadn’t already defined the meaning of pop music, its farmers that come home at night with heavy steps and earth in their boots, Robert Lowell, who refused to bomb Europe, its workers at gas stations and in banks, because sooner or later they get robbed, Frank Capra, because he knew that this is the best of all possible worlds, its ambulance drivers who look death in the eye although they haven’t been trained to do that, Kurt Cobain, whose pain in the stomach was unbearable, the same as the pain of the priest in Bresson’s movie; because: Whatever it is: it is all the Grace of God. Water A gentle rise takes to repeated ritual. To others it now starts to snow, flakes drifting around. Nothing can stop lethargy in the sunset. Music from the balcony returns things into the order of the fifties: it is beautiful because it is cold. Blue distance. In the market the crowd is dispersing and fruit has almost disappeared from the stands: soon it will rot, but that’s the reason for harlequin to appear behind the stone rampart. However, laughter is always redundant, and the sea drowns in the expected fall of night. Still, if one holds it just for a second on the palm, the water is transparent and ready to cast the clay and encircle the sign. Translated by: Jelena Stanovnik |
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