VALENTINA NOVKOVIĆ

 

Flutes

 

I keep twenty-two sleeping lilacs

next to my heart

their flowers only delight my eyes.

Twenty-two promises

remained in the dry river beds,

twenty-two silences somewhere else spoke,

with the song of heavenly flutes,

inaudible to me,

mother.

 

Hospital Room

 

A silence that only disturbs

The sound of oxygen.

Three men more dead than alive

More in the other world than in this world

They are sleeping.

What are they dreaming about?

Now that dreams are

Become a luxury?

Now that the feat is to welcome a new morning

And the bed across from you is empty.

What do sorrows worn out over the years dream about?

Arthritic knees that no longer move

Hands that can't even hold water alone?

Now, when the piece of sky has become a square

barely visible from the hospital rooms

Which swallows dignity.

 

VALENTINA NOVKOVIĆ

 

VALENTINA NOVKOVIĆ (Serbia), graduate philologist, poet, prose writer, literary translator. Editor in a publishing house. Published four book of poems (Timeless 2014, Drop by drop 2018, Riddles of Tenderness, 2020, Poems to the Heaven, 2022, which won the first prize at the Fifth Drina Literary Meeting) and one prose book (Two hours from reality, 2020), Winner of many awards for poetry and prose as well as for translations. The book of stories by the famous writer and translator Rahim Karimov, "Stories for youbg people" Alma, 2019, which she translated into Serbian, received the award for the best translated prose book in 2019 by Literary Translators. Her verses have been translated into 16 world languages, and the book Odgonetke nežnosti was translated into Romanian in 2022 (Leo Butnaru translator, Timpul publisher.) She has translated individual stories and poems of more than 300 authors into Serbian, interviewed all important creators around the world and interviews were published in more widely read newspapers or magazines for culture and art. Member of the Association of Writers of Serbia and Kazakhstan, the Serbian Literary Association, and many associations in the world. Editor and host of the forum "Literary Conversations".