Nenad Trajković writes

A CONVERSATION WITH A.

if you forget time
how old are you then
                  in the ears you accept music
                  only in a certain place
the voice you wait for
at the end always kills you

there is nothing new for you
you rotate by the law of sweetness
and so you create more lives
the fiction that you exist somewhere else as well
it turns you against me

something is painful in Divano bar* 

lots of antique clocks
with different numbers and needles
have weightlessness
                  the room is empty
                  (a waiter should not exist)
                  still life
                  and the swaths of
                  withered flowers
                  heavy fumes
                  for easy life
                  take you back to axiom topics
such knowledge does not give much hope

do you think sometimes about Poe

his dark world
did not leave secrets

                  everyone loses wife
                  and dresses her again
                  using the measures of the previous one
                  in this world no one is innocent
                  in dot of fogging  
                  we become incomplete and outraged

when you find a dream
it turns off after some time
like the little candle in church
you've lit because of it 
you see
eyes turn
circle cracks
irregularity leads

*A cafe in the town of Vranje, Serbia


--tr. Danijela Trajković

 
Angel Footfalls [illustration of Edgar Allan Poe's "The Raven"] -- Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Nenad Trajković writes

FIRST-DEGREE MURDER

if the wind did not throb the broken windows
we would not know for a long time
that the owner of the house was killed there
inconspicuous and unknown as he used to be
immediately he has begun to resemble an artist
becoming more famous after his death

the police searched for days
for the perpetrator
in the notebook
of the inspector for blood crimes
was written only the following
            social case
            no family
            no girlfriend
            no friends
            no enemies
            jobless
            only spoke with animals

after many years the inspector often remembers
the only unsolved case
because every day at the new kiosk
a homeless man reminds him
      I met his killer
      the day I became
      what I am
      do not ever look for him
      and write this in your notebook

punished without the right to pardon

ad acta
 

Nenad Trajković writes

INFANTICIDE

on the grave near the old village road

letters did not exist

people said it was a small Gypsy tomb

in which all the Gypsies from the missing mahala were placed

so one night when the super full moon has shown itself the villagers saw

the headless woman at the top of the hill giving birth

and throwing her child on a stone slab

to eat all the letters

--tr. Danijela Trajković

Mahala is originally Arabic word محلة, mähallä, which meant settling, occupying, but nowdays in the Balkans means a part of a town or village.