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128 pages
ISBN: 978-0967889313
Weight: 6.4 ounces
Stone Lullaby is a bilingual edition of a selection of Stevan Raičković’s best known poems. Raičković (1928–2007) is one of the most important poets writing in Serbia today. In the early 1950s, he quickly broke into the first ranks of modern Serbian poetry with his vibrant poems and extraordinary melodic solutions to the problems of versification. The fundamental nature of Raičković’s poetry is spontaneity: resonant and melodic, the poems are frequently written in the manner of a confession or a personal letter sent to a loved one.
——————————————————————————
THE PEOPLE AWAKE UNARMED
People enter their homes. They open memory boxes.
They shut their windows.
Then a little later
They peek
Through the curtains into the asphalt street
at swaying circles of light
Thrown by some lamp.
Beyond the river
People go into mud shacks.
Their backs are slightly bent.
They are listening
To something above their brows
The already
Faint
Play of wind and reeds.
On the trampled grass
Between settlement and town, whose names are riddles
Posed by someone,
Soldiers
Dark from dreaming
Stack their rifles in pointed pyramids.
They enter tents with their heads lowered as though|
they are bowing.
Anyhow
All around
Birds are turning into leaves.
Snakes successfully imitate cracks in tree bark.
Water and fish bypass each other
Each to its own dream.
The wind has stretched its transparent skin
across the sloping hills
Whose profile melts in the dark air.
Under the heavens
An interrupted recollection flows once again from
its roots
Each on its own pillow.
Then slowly
The stars signal a metamorphosis with the usual signs
And invisibly
Quietly exchange roles behind the scenes.
Leaves are transformed into birds.
Snakes and fissures move, each to its own flower
Each flower to its sun.
We already know what air is
And is not.
It is a mountain in its evident security.
The wind has come unglued and starts
Its uncertain millimeter.
Otherwise
All around
Under sheet metal roofs
Under grass roofs or roofs of whistling marsh reeds
Behind transparent glass beginning to light up
Within the stone torso of walls striped
with bands of dreams and whitewash
The eyes of the living are opening.
They are small
Innocent circles once again.
The moment is brief and must be seized by the reins.
The people awake unarmed.
128 pages
ISBN: 978-0967889313
Weight: 6.4 ounces
Stone Lullaby is a bilingual edition of a selection of Stevan Raičković’s best known poems. Raičković (1928–2007) is one of the most important poets writing in Serbia today. In the early 1950s, he quickly broke into the first ranks of modern Serbian poetry with his vibrant poems and extraordinary melodic solutions to the problems of versification. The fundamental nature of Raičković’s poetry is spontaneity: resonant and melodic, the poems are frequently written in the manner of a confession or a personal letter sent to a loved one.
——————————————————————————
THE PEOPLE AWAKE UNARMED
People enter their homes. They open memory boxes.
They shut their windows.
Then a little later
They peek
Through the curtains into the asphalt street
at swaying circles of light
Thrown by some lamp.
Beyond the river
People go into mud shacks.
Their backs are slightly bent.
They are listening
To something above their brows
The already
Faint
Play of wind and reeds.
On the trampled grass
Between settlement and town, whose names are riddles
Posed by someone,
Soldiers
Dark from dreaming
Stack their rifles in pointed pyramids.
They enter tents with their heads lowered as though|
they are bowing.
Anyhow
All around
Birds are turning into leaves.
Snakes successfully imitate cracks in tree bark.
Water and fish bypass each other
Each to its own dream.
The wind has stretched its transparent skin
across the sloping hills
Whose profile melts in the dark air.
Under the heavens
An interrupted recollection flows once again from
its roots
Each on its own pillow.
Then slowly
The stars signal a metamorphosis with the usual signs
And invisibly
Quietly exchange roles behind the scenes.
Leaves are transformed into birds.
Snakes and fissures move, each to its own flower
Each flower to its sun.
We already know what air is
And is not.
It is a mountain in its evident security.
The wind has come unglued and starts
Its uncertain millimeter.
Otherwise
All around
Under sheet metal roofs
Under grass roofs or roofs of whistling marsh reeds
Behind transparent glass beginning to light up
Within the stone torso of walls striped
with bands of dreams and whitewash
The eyes of the living are opening.
They are small
Innocent circles once again.
The moment is brief and must be seized by the reins.
The people awake unarmed.