DRAGAN JAKOVLJEVIC

DRAGAN JAKOVLJEVIC

VIGIL

You will not become a saint if you give up desires. Nor will a dull clang, from quivering aura of your unfading youth, easy, without a sword, drawn against sombre sky, balk at seed of great silence, that you conceive decisively, but tacitly.

The freedom of existing in another world brings unrest, but concord too. Mirthful colors of fire and the intoxicating smell of desires. Freedom, whose whisper gives you power to boldly strike down grass, reeds and cities, with strength of your light and the rough sea of dreams.

You will not become a saint, if you give up desires, but dusty, a lonely shadow, tired from stumbling on wilted hope. Conceived with radiance, then diluted, in a long night of futile vigil.

ILLUSION

Contempt and haughtiness toward every existence and what it has to be, so that amiable contrition over fortuitous, sundown radiance, always, with the same dagger and equally painful, rip my sight.

Equilibrium that takes us down or up, and that seizes us, is the one and permanent. The breath among the stars is the same breath among birds, treetops and bedewed pods.

As with every tiny and rebellious pebble, that wants to spoil the scene of a perfect mosaic of nature, that is how without you this could be one, in which you are but for a moment.

Don't do anything more. Since, the voice of being chosen to, by your own will, dwell life with your own frenzied passing by, it wasn't an awareness, but an illusion. He is, you just live.

TWO ROADS

If you are of two minds where to go: after smooth-spoken, ornate and vivid lamps crowned with foolishness or after boring, silent and plaintive wisdom, go in the opposite direction from where your senses stepped in.

Don't turn back after the calling of dazing smells, sticky from fresh colors and daring dreams. If you step in that path, you will discover how your wings, like those of a butterfly, are burned with the power of that glowing light, where it should not be aimed so easily and so virile.

Wisdom is slower and usually limping, but its inhabitant is eternal, in which the depths of our souls even in thousands years, like now, quench with juices of divine vigour. If your time is stormy and unable to recognize wisdom in a multitude of voices, you have to find it and safeguard it. Shield it and protect it with your palms, as a lifesaving flicker that will, when the storm disappears, light up beings that will again bring forth humans.

TRANSLATED BY DENISA KONDIC.

DRAGAN JAKOVLJEVIC

DRAGAN JAKOVLJEVIC (1965) lives and creates in Budapest (Hungary). He is a professor of Literary History at Faculty of Philosophy at Eötvös Loránd University Faculty of Humanities. He is an author of many scholar works in different fields such as literature, culture and media, and has been published internationally. He has published 10 books - written in Serbian, and translated into Hungarian and English. He is a member of the Association of Writers of Serbia, Association of Writers of Vojvodina, Association of Artists Circle (Budapest) and Association of Journalists of Serbia. He has many literary and social awards in Hungary, Serbia and Germany.