VALENTINA NOVKOVIĆ

 

 

She Has Only One Name

 

A decision you have to make yourself

an unprinted page that will become a book,

the smell of unknown distances

that come to your dreams.

 

Maybe she's a rock around your neck,

and maybe she's a carrier pigeon

who forgot the address.

 

Maybe it's a stone wall of silence,

a prayer for which no one has yet

invented the words,

they are waiting for you to speak them.

 

Maybe it's a road that has hundreds of paths

and there's only one that will embrace your heart.

 

Even if you don't know what to call her,

she has only one name - Destiny.

 

RAY

 

Meaning is achieved through movement,

every curve is a path that must be passed.

 

Although we make our own choices,

there is something calling us,

with a barely audible

but persistent voice.

 

Only when the melody

becomes one that we unconsciously repeat,

we know that it was a path that had to be taken,

that it was the call of a heart

that was looking for a pearl

made with a lot of pain and suffering,

that it was a fruit that fought with the wind,

prayed for rain,

a fruit that decided to face the storms

hidden under the biggest leaf,

became a companion of the sun.

 

In every ray of that sun,

your step is embedded.

 

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 young 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".