You pretend that you know that one is
the biggest and the loneliest number
and every time you say: “You are one of…”
and I stop you with one
finger on the lips.
I pretend that I know that “Magnolia”
always plays in one invisible theatre
and that our readiness for madness,
because of the pressure in the sun’s assembly,
nervousness in small fingers of our hands,
those unneeded, mine and yours,
is greater than cut out tongues of lovers
on the smudged canvas of illusion
whose ends God and the devil pull.
We pretend that we know what life is.
If we touch it, it can be
a curtain, a wall, a tombstone.
When we only watch it,
then it’s a human face, skin,
bloody and perishable.
When we get tired of it, we bite each
other’s fingers off and play shadows.
We pretend that we know what the canvas is.
We pretend that it is one,
we pretend that we are one.
– translated by Tomislav Kuzmanović