Translated by Scott Stewart & Luke Crane
1.
my grandad enclosed his courtyard with a fence
and thus won a plot of land,
though he lost the world.
and then he started to partition
that plot of land and
name the gardens.
I was a child and I loved most
the little connecting doors.
2.
we stake in poles – bounds,
we draw maps with some boundaries
and place people there
that scan through our bags
asking us where we are going
as though it really mattered to them.
where are you heading, gojko?
the border holder asks me at five o’clock
in the morning, and I, still not fully awake, say to him: home.
while thinking to myself:
back and forth the earth
or up and down? in space
or in time? now
or always and for eternity?
3.
we are centuries away from freedom.
for we still set ourselves free from
other people’s chains. and we do not feel
in the guts the key from the cell
in which we are locked.
we forget that the coffee we drink
to wake up is contained
in the residue at the bottom of the cup.
every day we talk about it. we even dare
sing about it. it’s just that,
we do so ill. full with
fear, instead of love.