BRANKO MILJKOVIC

Consciousness of the Poem

I’m not ashamed of anything anymore.
The sun has set. The desired fruit will erupt
With night. A self-dreaming voice finds treasure,
A distant wall where my ship has been bricked up.

I guard my pride in that wall, I sing
More beautifully—than I do free—immured.
Where do I get the strength to resist being,
When vines cannot resist, nor a ripe vineyard!

To live without the self: a strange desire?
To want a poem without a poet? Time,
From the oblivious past, does it admire
The betrayal of my thwarted design?

Does that mean saying to change: Not for
Me? And let the poem change itself? Or
To dedicate my life to beast and flower
And lend my strength to black roots’ hunger?

I’m not ashamed to sing behind a wall
Better in such night than I do free. So there,
The sun stings my heel. The blazing wall
At the end of the road — it leads nowhere.

The word fire! I thanked this word for my being alive
Whose power I possess to say it aloud.
Its ashes are forgetting. If I miss my stride
Before that word, may days of loss strike my brow.

The word blood! Its beauty must not.
My blood puts birds and beasts up for the night!
Perhaps there is no song beyond my heart
Because blood is beyond time, ink without might.

The word desire! It hasn’t found its meaning;
And the bird of hell in my gloomy brain.
O bitter seas for my white fleet, sailing
Through verbal reality and written-out main!

The word death! I’m glad it did not hold
Up my departure for the unknown—my self—
Where, if I don’t find the rescuing thought or my self,
I will instead find my double and his gold.

The word fire! I thanked this word for my being alive.
The word death! Thanks! You did not prevent
Me from loving my self and feeling astonishment
With the human power to utter these words of mine.

I believe that if I could utter words,
I would escape my self, yet hope to return
Through the wasteland to the place where I burn,
Even through death to reach the true doors.

Perhaps I will find a time of consolation
In mismatched words. Or else I’ll learn
That I kiss her aimlessly, like time, like rain,
Like changing words but not the hidden world.

I believe, though we must go into the night bereft
Of hope, into the oblivion I’m penetrating,
That song with no homeland, that bird without forest,
I won’t betray my death; I’ll live while dying.

A singer doesn’t know if it’s love or its friend,
Death. When fragrance awakens a flower,
Where is the flower? Is it the fragrant end
Of a full yet empty world or is it the flower?

Every poem is an empty, starlit form,
Which neither pain nor love can replace;
The remains of a day that will never return,
Emptiness that sings, coloring my peace.

Empty, starlit poem, your blossom
Lies to my heart over there, walks through blood,
And if I pluck it, leaves me for good,
And if I turn my back, it blossoms.

1957

THE SHEPHERD’S FLUTE

You sense the tender fevers of a disturbed flower.
Look, you’re bowing to plants again! Rush headlong
Down the trail left by the vanished summer
And the drunken south, and praise the world in song.
Renew the day because the thankless body
Spoils songs and sends shadows to the sun in reply.
Give back the bird to the man who is lonely:
Falconers cry beneath an empty sky.
Bid wild mountain ducks to enter legend.
Unite the senses in a song so they won’t end
In the body’s night. Make sparing
Use of the visible to create memory everlasting.
Empty my lap and take my heart, fly,
Outwit misfortune, declaim eternal return,
Open the gates of Smederevo, court the bird,
Falconers cry beneath an empty sky.

BALLADE
for the troubadors of Ohrid

O wisdom, the untaught glimmers of sunrise.
I lost my right to use ordinary words!
My heart is a dying fire, and my eyes
Burn. Sing, O glorious elders,
While stars like metaphors burst! What’s
High vanishes; what is low rots.
Bird, I will lead you to words. But surrender
The borrowed flame. Ashes do not profane.
We heard our heart beat in a stranger.
To sing and to die is the same.

Sun is a word that cannot cast beams.
Conscience cannot sing because it fears
Delicate voids. Eagles, vision thieves,
Are pecking away at my flesh inside. Here
I’m shackled to a boulder that does not exist.
We signed with stars invisible night’s grift,
Now darker for it. Remember well
That fall into life as lasting proof of your flame.
When ink ripens into blood, everyone will
Know that to sing and to die is the same.

O wisdom, the stronger first concedes!
Only low-lifes know what poetry means,
Thieves of fire, utterly unlovely,
Are tied to the mast of a ship in pursuit
Of an undersea song more dangerous than reality.
The sun, knocked out in ripe fruit,

Can replace a kiss that puts ashes to eternal
Rest. No one following us will claim
The strength to serenade the nightingale
When to sing and to die is the same….

Life resists death, but is deadly.
A terrible disease will be named after me.
We’ve suffered a lot. Hell, now tame,
Sings. Let the heart not waver—steady!
To sing and to die is the same....

THE SEA BEFORE I START DREAMING

The world vanishes slowly. People can go
Stare at false time on the wall: O let’s go!
The boundaries in which we live our lives
Are not the boundaries in which we die.
A dead body, pungent night,
The heart is dead but depth will persist.
Water would like to drink itself tonight
Down to the bottom, then stop, rest.

Travel as long as there’s world and knowledge for you:
May dust beautify you; know ashes and splendor.
Go blindly down your road, but remember:
The sun is false, but its course is true.
Let merchants of time sail with ears sealed
With wax. Listen bravely to the singing wasteland
While white stars, before an enclosed sea, kneel
And you’ve still got the strength to tear yourself apart
limb from limb.

O emptiness, how small are the stars!
Your dream without body, night without night,
Is an adjective full of praise to pure sunlight.
The fact that I see you, is it my power or yours?

Transparent enclosure conquered by splendor,
Raw transparence that frightens me more,
Your flower is a solitary star above the city,
Your futility is pure gold! Futility!

The world vanishes slowly, the sad world.
Who will bury us heart and bone,
Where memory does not reach, where the twirl
Of movement won’t multiply us or days come and go!
Rip out my tongue and there plant a flower:
Stop the words! I’m lost in a luminous shower.
Tomorrow even cowards will be able to do
What today only the brave and just can do
Who, in the gap between us and the night above,
Find glorious reasons for different love.

The world is vanishing. But we fiercely believe
In an idea no one has thought of yet, that soars
In empty space, in the sea foam when the sea
Mingles with the void — and roars.

Translated by Milo Yelesiyevich
with the assistance of Milos Lužanin