VALENTINA NOVKOVIĆ

 

Island

 

The beast of silence rests from the day

in which the harsh attempts were reconciled

with the fact that somehow they slipped through the narrow.

Here, I give you the eyes of the palms.

I know: you are a brush

and kissed the canvas images.

 

In me, here, the island began to sprout

from ice and fruits, from deadness and capriciousness,

from everything that is a contradiction but overflows with harmony.

 

I patiently collect the tears of the past in bottles

autumn that on Saturday one, promised,

to mature into the wine of speech about that

which we only managed to understand without speaking

There are those days when he lives in pain

decorated with long sighs

when you calmly change the water in a vase without flowers

listening to how many times the crows chirped helplessly.

 

Such days are called love,

love that binds to the molecule of tenderness in fences,

daily thorns.

 

Release

 

I can't let you go

even though everything in me is dusting

turns from trying to

weave us into a meaningful tangle.

I can't introduce us to Bashlar,

to introduce us to Berdjaev.

I'm weak on your inaudible gait

on a slightly scratched parquet,

I am weak and strong at the same time

when I close the door

knowing that God is generous to us

into the life of the recognizable

send.

 

I can't let you go,

though each branch me to it

reminds even though our palates did not merge

and yet we shared a thousand kisses

I can't and I don't know

how to wax durability

they make on the ground from lumps and wind,

how sighs of fatigue on yours

eyes steal, while I can't sleep.

 

I can't let you go,

and everything resists duration:

crumpled chocolate wrapper,

a bottle of unknown wine on the table

and glasses that are immediately after

uses must be washed

and our encounters in the dark

hallways.

 

I can't let you go,

because that would be death in the middle

the brightest dawns of my existence

without guests, bouquets and rosemary.

Instead of everything, the nightingales would play

dance

on a gentle whistle of pain.

 

I can't let you go even though everything turns

into non-existence every time my heart

reminds me of the impossibility

the impossibility you yourself created

when you closed the door to the apple seed,

which cannot ripen without you,

that's why I'm hungry.

 

If I ever let you go,

it will be the saddest poem of the one

which rests on your shoulder.

 

The Magic Of Pain

 

We once loved each other around a fire

at the time of the full moon when sorcerers

changed teeth for grass what

they can whisper. That love cost us

habitats and now from the end to

the end of the world we go,

throwing dice on odd days.

 

We once loved each other while the wind was blowing

carried away happiness from paneled windows

behind which the children quarreled over the cake.

Now we pretend to be dumb when the sky asks us:

on which side of the world you have sold hearts

for a handful of fair spells?

 

We once loved each other on the tops

three-headed mountains into which no one

does not go away while spells about winged pain

do not learn. That is why we are pretending to be blind now

in front of what would us

in the abyss could summon.

The abysses of re-love.

 

VALENTINA NOVKOVIĆ

 

VALENTINA NOVKOVIĆ: (Serbia) graduated from the Department of Russian Language and Literature (second language English), literary translator, poet and prose writer, journalist and editor. Represented in numerous domestic and foreign anthologies. Her poems have been translated into Russian, English, Macedonian, Romanian, Uzbek, Azerbaijani, Vietnamese, Korean, Bangla and other languages. Winner of many awards for poetry and prose. She has published four poetry books Timeless (Draslar, 2014) Drop on Drought (Parthenon, 2018), Puzzles of Tenderness (Liberland, 2021), and Poems from heaven (2022) as well as the book of stories Two Hours of Reality (AWS, 2020) Editor at the Liberland publishing house, where she edits works by artists from Serbia and the surrounding area and translates works by authors from the Russian-speaking area and authors writing in English. Journalist of the Focus News portal, where her interlocutors were many creators from Russia and the former Soviet Union and writers from all over the world. She has translated over thirty authors from all over the world into Serbian, and has received many awards for her translations.