In the earliest beginnings everything was presaged:
Flame is bestowed, you burn.
And no one grasps: how, what from and where that

Ardor combined with dream is.
Perhaps in the soul first: divine spell of rain
In the eye behind an eye. And then

From fellow men's ice drops of black milk
Begin to flow. All reasons for a whip to flourish
Down your back as along a horse's crupper.

With a bird in your hand,
That knows no song,
You grasp:
It is the same trouble you share.


II

You run out of the house through its thatched roof,
You breathe in a flower's color. You memorize
A bird's wing, seize the flame

You throw it on your house first.
See: no one can believe it!
You show: a tree grown from the sky!

At noon they take a dog's leash and a hair shirt,
Entice you from the field, sky, orchard,
To the hearth. Ashes to your eyes. And facing the living portrait

Of your father. And you just start believing in kinship's allure
And you are already tied to a chair's leg. Or to a door.
Family's thorns hurt: barley, salt and rye.

Show that picture of
Your crazy ancestor on the horse.
They add: you look like him:
Same brow, nose and lower lip!


III

You wall yourself out from the wall they wall you in,
You go to the field. To some secluded place of yours.
You find your ancestors' grass. Wait for reddish-brown

Moonlight in the horse's mane, in the hot wind's curls.
You hear: a plant next to you from its roots differs.
You notice: the world is not made of four sides only. Sideless

Is the road that for a passage invites you.
Take the shape of your father's skull with you, boots and bullets,
First raven's sign, eagle's beak, owl's eyes...

Is the road that for a passage invites you.
Take shape of your father's skull with you, boots and bullets,
First raven's sign, eagle's beak, owl's eyes...

At your home
Your family tree
Shall die instead of you.
You leave the house scratched...


IV

You spend the night out and listen to the ninth fever:
In each bone the cold is crystal-clear.
Snatch serpent's fang or snarled snake.

You shall need it for summer song's ending,
For an image in which living stone shatters.
Let no one know. Not even the dear dog.

All day long at your father's and brothers' wish
It shall bark at the side of the world where your back
Shall be the last image of you to be known by:

Dogs, and relatives
And lead-gray home.
You are to face that dreadful hour.
Oh, poet, hurry!


V

Level the road behind you. If you turn around:
The sky may get you back. The graveyard may.
The horse may. White up in the mountain.

A lamb may. Younger brother's frowning brow may.
A broken bird may. A cherry tree may. A cocoon may.
A sudden snap in you may, oh yes, it may.

A glow-worm may glow. A cicada from the fence may.
A horseshoe may. A bee's sting may. A storm may.
Anything may get you back. Even someone's kindness.

A decayed star,
Over that roof of yours,
Waits for you to turn around.
And your faithful dog's eyes wait for it!


VI

If you do not look back: you are the one that darkness
Instigates the Black Flower to Kiss.
And you are already kissing it. The drama has begun,

Oh, my sad Hamlet from under the thatch,
from the branch. To the Devil for Communion come!
Let eye stare in the eye. Hand to the flame!

Bear it! Let all faces rotate on your face!
And the one who endures: to the other will be
The Creator. The Singer. And fate bird, too!

Oh, my Hamlet,
Under the Milky Way,
Under the raw stars,
They steal your heart's flame !


VII

Do not worry: vices and dooms assault,
Diseases fight each other which shall have more of you.
Asleep are the people you are from. And in your room

The ink sheds light, words are set afire,
In your lung's pinnacle rotten apple smells sweet,
In your spine: dried up twelfth reel.

You pilfer chemically clean night.
Against the south wind with an orange's soul,
You tame the sea on one sheet only.

While your right hand,
Oh, my Hamlet,
In your shoulder is ossified,
You are still only your own!


VIII

In your candlestick candles swap.
Eye's lens fade. Brain membrane grows dim. Look,
Even that white raven of yours bursts into the poem.

That is not paper any more. Not handwriting.
You defend yourself with a wax-circle around your head.
For night not to pass and flood

Into you, while there is you. While you breathe.
Death more thoughtful than a friend: waits in a female butterfly
Observes the mild word you are writing it with.

Oh, my Hamlet,
You are losing sight!
You do not need eyes
To kiss Her!


IX

Do you know: it is a white day's first break.
Behind your back there grows a tree? chair.
You do not walk the town slender in the morning any longer.

Dusk is the color of your blood. And no one saw you
Going down to the river to kiss the water.
As you wished: And the river passed you by.

Not even a sun ray to run down your window.
The sun avoids suns in your papers,
Over which the nightest nights you spend.

Oh, my Hamlet,
Even your heart is drying up!
How much of female corporeality only
You have on your soul!


X

No more white space between you
And the abyss. Going back to life! Who are you?
Anyone can kill you. Can scratch off

The skin from you alive. Can wind
Copper wire round any bone of yours,
To melt it on your only face.

In tar they can throw you. Scabs they can
Inject. And frogs leprosy to engraft.
Such is the age: it will knock you off your feet.

Oh, my Hamlet,
No single salvation is yours.
Do you see: You have no homeland,
No fellow men, no family!


XI

You smell of lead from books. Of rotten
Sweet cherry. Of Homer with a walking stick.
Of Achilles' heel. Of an army in disarray!

Of olives. Of fish bone and vinegar.
Of the first plane's photo. Of a sword fallen ill.
Metaphors rage: you think it's dawning!

A dawn from an antler. From a stone
Jug. Confide in the recollection of a plant,
Remembered light, an oil ewer.

Oh, my Hamlet,
you are all alone.
Even the flower grown in your sonnet
Turns its head from you!


XII

Water in lungs. In the knee. An Etching
On a chest bone is drawn by your illness.
Exposed to radiation is your cancerprint.

And that is a new book, too. Not even an ebony knife
Can go through it. You should have known it
Back when the Black Flower you touched.

You are a garden. And without that root
You would an ordinary yard be, only -
Pointlessly healthy successor of cornelian cherry!

Oh, my Hamlet,
Throw your golden sword away as well.
To a slender swordsman
Most slender are his steps!

XIII

Your success is unmatched: Death respects you. Loves you.
It is first person plural.
You finally made her ill

From you. From herself. Although
Young as Lermontov. Even younger.
She admits: Only now death is beautiful.

What remains: To go only out to the field.
You must! Find it by yourself.
Exhale under the stars and your loving quatrain

Say for the last time.
Oh, my Hamlet, enough with hypocrisy.
Never let your eyes look to the ground,
It is you coming back from exile.

Translated by: Uroš Zeković