MILICA JEFTIMIJEVIĆ LILIĆ

MILICA JEFTIMIJEVIĆ LILIĆ

I TAKE INTO MYSELF THE ECHO OF THE SUN

When I wake up I wave back to the Sun

Gratefully

I take into myself the words of a prayer to permeate me with holiness,

To purge me of the dark,

To make a slash so that nothing of yesterday can touch my heart

Or leave traces of heinous acts from the screen,

Of bloodthirsty struggle among presidential candidates,

Of bomb echoes at airports worldwide,

Of tormented faces of hungry children

Disturbing consciousness,

Of disconcerted gazes of mothers looking in vain for their sons

Who have not come back from the battlefield,

Of impudent rotundities of starlets,

Of euphoric salvoes of laughter of shallow hosts,

Of deafening street noise,

Of screams of neurotic neighbors

Tearing one another apart

In universal helplessness.

I take into my soul the sublime peace of a prayer

Originated in remote silences of faith

In order to honorably carry the burden of the day

Supported by it

Without a pain, curse or bowing knees.

I take into myself the constancy of the Sun

To resound stronger than anything,

To try again to shine my autumn.

A MOMENT OF REALITY

While enveloped by the Moon and grazed by death

You dream about a far-away shore that is not

Conquered in your absence

I have too little of you,

More than he has me

He who suffers from admonishing longing,

From the jealousy that makes him a beast,

He sharpens his sense of being threatened

And feels the danger like a beast and knows:

You have become the center –

You have sheltered all of me,

You have pulled me into yourself.

You have, like Zeus on Mount Olympus,

Assumed all the power and hidden me.

In vain does he give birth to me like to Aphrodite

I am not where he left me

To be waiting for the promised waking.

And you just turned up suddenly

Like a stray bullet and drove into me,

Anchored in my Soul you radiate devastatingly,

And the removing of the bullet would be fatal.

The entire system of existence became disrupted,

Everything was changed hit with that shot.

My blood flow, poisoned, is clotting up

Will I am stumbling toward myself

To come back to the same road…

And you wandering under the old  walls

To reach the new heights

Do not turn round

For the scene of unbearable emptiness

The abysses of my essence

Will appall you.

Filled with the mercy of the moment

Neither you nor I

Wonted it.

THE INSEPARABLE

You can be seduced by all goddesses in succession,

Hellenic, Roman, Slavic ones,

You can be conquered by Vesta,

All your thoughts can be tied in knots

By Ariadne,

Aiming to erase, to cancel me.

Your eyes can be

Blindfolded by Chromos,

Your hearing can be stunned by Circe,

But in the softest murmur of wind

You will hear my heart whispering

A prayer for your calm.

In a sharp shriek of a seagull

You will identify the scream of my soul

Into which you took a peep once.

In an unexpected cloud above you,

When you are filled with joy,

You will see my face full of tears

That, looking for you, hides its longing.

Escaping the most tremendous danger

You will feel the blessing

Obtained by the muteness of my lips.

In your most secret part

You will know that I am here

And at times you will smile at me

Compassionately.

In the deepest doubt in everything

You will meet my eyes which know

That, once broken,

Like us,

Never give themselves to anyone wholly.

TRANSLATED FROM THE SERBIAN BY LAZAR MACURA

MILICA JEFTIMIJEVIĆ LILIĆ

MILICA JEFTIMIJEVIĆ LILIĆ  (Serbia): 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, storyes and essays...She is representedin many anthologies and has many literary awards of national importance  as international...Her  works translated into more than 28 lenguages of world.She  was vice President of the Association of writers of Serbia. Lives in Belgrade since 1999.