WE NEVER LIVED EXCEPT WHEN READING
by Jasmina Topic
I got lost in the space of a book,
the words of a poem in an unknown language followed me,
warm Mediterranean ethnic music, like joint
stays on islands where joy is always to be renewed.
Two spaces edged by shadows and music
annulled me; they brought me down to the level
of a line not drawn,
at the bottom of a sheet, outside the footnote.
Where belonging was dying out
the passion for writing emerged, for one
of the possible worlds washed out by salt
like a misprint.
And the space of the book changed our facial
form, gave us a purpose. And I was. –
Truly attached to verses, to pictures
the way I was to a shoulder of bygone times,
dreaming of northern seas so lively,
from those letters arranged into verses.
I listened, waiting for gold bugs
to start milling across my skin, trembling. I resided
under polar light, within arm’s reach of the otherness
of another, real life...
But we never lived except when reading, sizing up
that which preceded and followed the writing while your eyes,
tiny nutshells on the line of the imaginary,
were both the sea and insomnia.
Now I slide slowly by the glacier whose names
and purpose I do not recognize.
And as if in a deep, deepest dream under ice floes,
occasional voices call out to me from the light
in which it is no longer possible to reside.
This morning, from dawn till dusk.
We never lived except when reading by Jasmina Topic
Translated by Novica Petrovic
__________________________
Urban Book Circle® (UBC)
I got lost in the space of a book,
the words of a poem in an unknown language followed me,
warm Mediterranean ethnic music, like joint
stays on islands where joy is always to be renewed.
Two spaces edged by shadows and music
annulled me; they brought me down to the level
of a line not drawn,
at the bottom of a sheet, outside the footnote.
Where belonging was dying out
the passion for writing emerged, for one
of the possible worlds washed out by salt
like a misprint.
And the space of the book changed our facial
form, gave us a purpose. And I was. –
Truly attached to verses, to pictures
the way I was to a shoulder of bygone times,
dreaming of northern seas so lively,
from those letters arranged into verses.
I listened, waiting for gold bugs
to start milling across my skin, trembling. I resided
under polar light, within arm’s reach of the otherness
of another, real life...
But we never lived except when reading, sizing up
that which preceded and followed the writing while your eyes,
tiny nutshells on the line of the imaginary,
were both the sea and insomnia.
Now I slide slowly by the glacier whose names
and purpose I do not recognize.
And as if in a deep, deepest dream under ice floes,
occasional voices call out to me from the light
in which it is no longer possible to reside.
This morning, from dawn till dusk.
We never lived except when reading by Jasmina Topic
Translated by Novica Petrovic
__________________________
Urban Book Circle® (UBC)
Poem & Photographs: Jasmina Topic
All rights reserved 2013. Copyright © Jasmina Topic
Translation from Serbian into English by Novica Petrovic
All rights reserved 2013. Copyright © Novica Petrovic
Published by Urban Book Circle on August 7, 2013
Urban Book Circle® (UBC)
All rights reserved 2013. Copyright © Jasmina Topic
Translation from Serbian into English by Novica Petrovic
All rights reserved 2013. Copyright © Novica Petrovic
Published by Urban Book Circle on August 7, 2013
Urban Book Circle® (UBC)
