Poetry – Josip Osti

/, Literature, Blesok no. 138 - 139/Poetry – Josip Osti

Poetry – Josip Osti

In my pocket I still keep the key to my former home
Building a house after the war
The sun warms everyone everywhere equally
With a rusty bayonet from World War One
Come, love, quickly into the garden
I don”t know when I will go blind
Whenever we meet, we gaze at each other for a long time
Most often I speak to the dead
All my life I am saying good-bye to life


In my pocket I still keep the key to my former home

In my pocket I still keep the key to my former
home, which, since the last war in my
home town, has been lived in by strangers
who have changed the lock on the main door
a long time ago … I know that a key without a lock
no longer has a reason for being, but
this key means something higher to me, just like
many other generally useless
objects … The dry chestnut I picked up
on a tree-lined avenue leading to the source
of the river Bosna … A saucer for the beer mug from
the Golden Tiger Inn in Prague, where I
met Hrabal … The napkin on which
the English poet Adrian Mitchell
drew me an elephant … The dust of a lemon
flower whose unforgettable smell reminds
me of our walks along the seashore
between Podaca and Brist … Objects which
warm the palm, like the egg my neighbour
brought me as soon as it was laid,
and which stir the memory … In my pocket
I still keep the key to my former home …
I don’t know if this key dreams its own memory,
its other half, as I dream my
beloved wife, equally dark and
mysterious, to whom for years in my dreams, although she
sleeps next to me, I have been writing poems
instead of love letters. All I know is that,
inexplicably, she shows me the way to the darkroom
of language, in which alone I feel perfectly
free.

AuthorJosip Osti
2021-08-17T20:59:08+00:00 August 15th, 2021|Categories: Poetry, Literature, Blesok no. 138 - 139|0 Comments