MILITSA YEFTIMIJEVIC LILIC

MILITSA YEFTIMIJEVIC LILIC

I MOVE AWAY

I move away from the center

Where you were a lamp

And I don't see anything except the quiver

of a candle that burns out

And there is no gleam of light in me.

If you don't move and multiply the beam

And its hotness doesn't singe me while

I am yet still close and burn me

Forcing me to turn back

And flare up again

From your glitter

It will be too late for a new swing.

The burned wings will stay by the train of my dress

And they will not rise up for a new flight

And it will not take you along

To a world where you have never been

But yearned to be so strongly.

If you persevere in silence

And push all the words into the corner of the soul

Hiding from yourself what I already know

You will never return

To a long longing voyage to yourself

Where there has always been

that which intoxicated you,

Imperceptibly and irretrievably,

Since you looked for yourself in me,

In that infinity so unknown to you, but needed.

If I leave, you will grasp the meaning of all,

This quaint encounter that happened to you,

Of the insights that you would never reach by yourself

Where I, even without my will,

By the grace of God, primevally belong.

Author: Mr Milica Jeftimijevic Lilic

Translation: Denisa Kondic

THE PRESENCE OF ABSENCE

You are a black Moon that pulls me up

And I, enchanted, am climbing,

You are too present in the absence

We become one through your logos.

I am Lilith, always demanding.

You can come into me only through mind

You know that, and wait for my command.

The door of my innerself are high.

Only by a torch of words you can enter

Into the midst of the lucidity

That agitates my blood,

That embodies the river between us

To wash away our karma

Unseparated in the eternity of a poem,

To hide the midnight sun

That radiates intoxicating, but resisting.

As a black dove, I restlessly

Circle above you, suppress the pain,

Sweetly coo to call you

On the moonlight feast where I will dance

In white, like dervish, my vertiginous dance.

When you turn ready for all,

I will disappear.

Author: Milica Jeftimijevic Lilic

Translation: Denisa Kondic

GOD UNITES US

That touch of the hands,

That sublime giving

Occurred beyond recall.

As if we washed death

From our hands

Everything that used to be

Between us  for centuries.

We were gathered by the Logos.

As if we were born

In that joining of the hands,

In the bliss not felt before.

The water of the essence

Flows through us

Into our palms,

So that God's face

Reflects in it

And speaks through us.

God unites us , he is here to stay!

He has settled into our palms

And we keep Him to ourselves.

TRANSL.FROM SERBIAN, LAZAR MACURA

MILITSA YEFTIMIJEVIC LILIC

MILICA JEFTIMIJEVIĆ LILIĆ was born at Lovac near Banjska, Kosovo & Metohija, on August 28, 1953. She graduated at the Faculty of Philosophy in Priština, and won a master's degree in philological sciences at the University of Belgrade. She was a professor at the University of  Priština, and editor on Belgrade TV. She has published the following collections of poems: Dark, Salvation (1955), The Hibernation (1998), The Travelogue of the Skin (2003), and a collection of stories The Subject-matter of the Case (2002). She has also published books of criticism: Poetics of the Premonition (2004), The Epsistomlogical Illuminations (2007), Critical Roots and Ranges (2011), The Exactness of the Secret (2012)…Partenon buildings of stars, (poetry) ,Arka Smederevo , Stari Kolašin,Zbin Potok,2015… She also writes stories for children which have been published in Children's Papers, Unity and other newspapers. She is representedin many anthologies and has many literary awards of national importance  as international...Her poems  and pieces of criticism have been translated into Russian, English, Italian, German, French, Hungarian,Macedonian, Turkish, Swedish, Polish and Arabic....more than 25 lenguages of world. She was vice President of the Association of writers of Serbia, a member of literary society of writers of Kosovo and Metohija and a member of the Association of Journalists of Serbia.

Lives in Belgrade since 1999.

Translated from the Serbian  

by Lazar Macura