House of Language

/, Blesok no. 50/House of Language

House of Language

I am building a house anew
Have no other brothers but poets
Have I been left without a language?
Do the dead divide us from the living
We used to read the same poems
The poem was and always will be your only home, Marina Tsvetaeva
Books – angels, house gods

Books – angels, house gods – you crowded
my apartment in Sarajevo. Shelves stacked full – an altar
before which I stood so many times, humbled,
wondering which one to reach for, what secret to try
to unravel, where to leave the traces of reading.
Traces of rapture and appreciation. Questions
and exclamations of sleeplesness and fear.
The mysterious glyphs of different
lines, dots, and many other pencil marks.
Slight, as well as rough scars on paper, words of love
and anger scribbled in illegible hand on the margins
and between the lines. And I knew that no matter how much
I read there would always be incomparably more
of the unread, that books will continue
to hold the hidden treasure I have searched for
all my life. In this, my only consolation was knowing
that the search itself is a greater treasure.
Books – angels, house gods – you crowded
my writing desk, my confessional. Where I made myself
lonely with you and conversed with you more honestly
than with any other person, not even the closest
and the dearest. Openly, as a man alone
with himself. To your open heart
I opened mine. Before your bared soul I laid
mine. To you I confessed all my trespasses. All desires.
Intents… Before you, I stood as I was
born of the mother. Naked.
Dropping my masks, one after another.
Shedding my skin… You lay on the floor,
everywhere, piled next to my pillow
on the bedside cabinet. Even when I sank to sleep
with the one chosen from your ranks that evening,
you were illumined by the lamp. I carressed it,
just as I carressed, dreaming, the body
of a woman with whom I fell asleep.
And was awakened in the middle of the night or at dawn
by the sharp edges of the covers. The edges of reality
rougher than a nightmarish dream. Books –
angels, house gods – in my hands and before
my eyes you unfolded your wings, like rustling silk
under the fingers of merchants and buyers, eager
to wrap the naked body of a woman, echoing the waves
of the ocean sailed by the ship that has brought it
from distant lands. As if doves were alighting on my open
palms, and taking off. As if I, too, had grown wings.
The wings of angels that have protected me
since childhood from many human evils. The wings of gods
I believed in and swore on. The wings that even today
take me to the city of my birth. To the city sunken
in darkness. Which – like you, books – angels,
house gods – like you, rests awake
in this grim night. Just as I used to lie there
so many times in grim darkness. Awake.
In love. Or, like the city, punished unjustly.

2018-08-21T17:23:13+00:00 October 7th, 2006|Categories: Poetry, Blesok no. 50|0 Comments