MILICA JEFTIMIJEVIĆ LILIĆ

MILICA JEFTIMIJEVIĆ LILIĆ

THE DANCE OF NAKED WORDS

It was Sunday,

the day for reveries

from the tower toward the sky.

And it did occur.

The long-waited sparkle

descended and burst

into flame within them.

Words

until then dressed

in costumes, veils,

started dancing naked

broken free of all fetters.

They entered the very essence of things.

And everything was easily named.

They repeated Adam's act,

meanings and forms fused.

The dazing impact

of the said

threatened

opening a maze.

The liberated passion

flew high

up to dangerous borders.

The word heated better than fire,

better than the touch.

Eve hurled the apple

triumphantly!

THE TOUCH OF A DISTANCE

My clairvoyant hands,

as hot as a sorcerer's hands

set in motion by thought

touch the chosen thing,

it is them that have encountered you.

Seeing better than the eyes

they impeccably guide me,

Logos always appeals to me.

I write down a word or two

and the rainbow gives a flash

fusing two violent waters

aware of the might of the said.

It shoots them through to the bottom

integrated by the force of origins.

Out of the overheated core

sterling flows over

with a deep trail.

I touch letters one by one,

they spread energy with ease.

Receiving it you light up –

you open all doors

to me – a woman.

And you do not know what breaks you:

either the touch of fire or the might of the said

that defeated you at once.

Or the secret of the being from afar

that flashes when fusing with you.

A PART OF MAGIC

With a single move

I break the thread of everyday life

with no sense or joy. . .

I receive the sound from afar

and I am at once there

a part of a strange language, rhythm

so different from mine,

from my intimate emptiness,

I get excited

and start swinging,

my body fuses with that distance,

with that Other that suits me.

And I do know that out of that sound

the layers of the being travelling

through time speak,

and I take it with my body, with my mind,

and set in motion I glitter

in the universality of the world,

in that strange truth

of my destiny

over which I keep vigil

worriedly like mother.

But it floods everything

and rules

sometimes making

gentle utterances

with harmonious sounds

created by the passion of an individual,

and belonging to all of us

wherever we are

so remote in everything.

Yes, I tell myself

(then my fulfilled destiny keeps silence),

you are a part of mankind

united by the passion of

Creating,

not of war campaigns, of hate,

for they divide.

TRANSLATED FROM THE SERBIAN  

BY LAZAR MACURA            

     

MILICA JEFTIMIJEVIĆ LILIĆ

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, Jedinstvo, and other newspapers. Shi 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.