three poems by miroslav kirin

God is thinking about me and eating me.
Tomaz Salamun
 

WE CRUMBLE EVEN without you,
looking at us, overwhelmed with envy.

You're not sweating, and your blood isn't
dripping. You're as transparent as 

our smile, granted from you
to replace hope, so that we could 

imagine joy every time we are 
trembling from some misfortune. And you 

would rather suffer, wouldn't you? Your
hands are too clean, aren't they? It

would be very nice to get acquainted with
the mushiness of mud, with the heat of blood pouring

all over the palms, spouting from the hole
in the forehead. Or, suppose, if you

started arguing with my wife? Would
you stand a chance? I know, you're wordy,

but what's the use of your words 
when anyone uses them in

a different way? Please, do admit, you would
lose the battle with her. She would make no answer,

and you wouldn't know which of the words you 
could use to drive her out of that unbearable silence.

After all, you haven't managed to drive us out of our pain,
we're still there, stuck, having trust in you.

As usual, we're probably wrong. Has it
ever worked? No. Actually, during all this time

you've been eating this world, and you're not
surfeited with it. You're particularly fond of 

the fresh ones, whose eyes never close and who
stick out their tongues toward you, whose noses

are jutted out, up to the sky, where they
tickle your soles. I know, you would like

best to trample down on them, squash them
just like. Well, you're too lazy for that, too.

You can live with it. And say: I've tolerated
it, suffered pain, here's the truth I'm going to

bestow upon you. And then you stop speaking,
for silence is a dogma that can be easily

argued about. When, in the course of an argument,
someone's belly is slashed, they say: "They lost

their mind." And the argument about the role of mind resumes
till a half of its participants are bored to death.

Then they are buried outside the cemetery, just like.
No eulogies. Just the mourning parties dressed

in the habits of opaque silence. With cynical flowers
in the lapels. With elastic plasters on

the mouth and legs. With uneven earth under them.
They stumble all the time and disappear

as in Argentine. Whoever comes back, becomes
awfully cynical because he has eaten all the flowers

from the lapels of his friends. Who are, you se, not
friends any more because they hold their tongues,

although they have disappeared long ago. Pardon me, but 
the're not dead, they are able to talk! Well, they are called upon

to tell the truth. There can't be any excuse for that,
apart from the excuse you've bestowed upon them.
You're so generous when you grant us with silence.
It's at your disposal, you say, do whatever you can do.

Anyway, words are not for you, I'm their creator
and the only owner. I've been written down in your letters

and I'm everything you yearn for. Your love begins and ends in me. So does your speech. No one else will ever

be able to say anything because they're not me.
I am you, a heap of crumbles without my share in it.

I am a lamp swinging inside the ice cube.
I illuminate the love of fish.
 

A MEETING WITH the one who has
suffered amnesia is needed desperately. To embrace

his body bathed in continuous weeping
(but never for himself).

In the meantime - do
your best:

bring tears back
into the eyes

bring words back
into the mouth:
 

THERE IS A BLUE light in my room
coming from outside. It just comes off

from somewhere and remains lying on the floor.
Or overflows the brims of the objects taken away,

all those forms persistently missing,
radiating their emptiness. The photographs

pile up in photo albums and are gutted by fire
before anyone could have recognized himself.

Once in a while a Christmas table arises from
its coffin as if we're about to be served.

My relatives arrive bringing their peculiarities,
the warmth of faded chairs brings a short whistle.

Melancholy sparks all over the places where
we used to lean on our elbows, lay down our heads

exhausted by a long work or a throbbing pain, all over
the places where we kept hidden our hands or legs

trying to spread secret love messages. Someone
brings in the coffee, but somehow it leaks through

the holes in the coffee cups. It would vanish, anyway. 
So would the photographs. And the sense

of belonging. All. Following it, the words retire, the creatures 
of weakness. The sweet murmur of rapprochement vanishes.

The relatives have just seaten to stand up instantaneously,
plunging into their portion of thick darkness.

I don't think we've had any conversation. It's so sad.
The warmth of chairs vanishes, too. The glare

of the set table goes out. At the same moment, a dark,
hot water will spurt somewhere else and

splash the stiff faces in a lame attempt
to unfreeze the frozen.

The table is cleaned up again due to the lack of
those who usually sit at it. The table-ware clanks

noiselessly. The coffin yawns. A place for infinite
loneliness opens. The hands, in some distant

part of the world, clasp to commence the speech
for the deaf. An open box lies in the middle of

the room. The memories unhook themselves and
settle down in the corners which refuse to acknowledge

the hardships of people who want to live a life on their
own, who need a rest from the lightness of starting a history.

The box, being immensely tired, yawns and shuts itself
off into its impenetrable hollowness. Becomes a box.

The light falls down and remains
lying. Still. Immobile. Doesn't run like water.

Overburdened, the box will
open - never again. Goodbye.

 

Miroslav Kirin lives in Zagreb, Croatia. 
He writes poetry and short fiction. He has published two volumes of poetry and a collection of short fiction. 
His work has also been published in Poetry, The Poetry Magazine, News of the Brave New World, Gowanus,
and Kontrast.