In the city you'll understand
a cat's walk on the rooftops.
With ease
from the chimney to the cherry tree.

Looking east
the left eye of my apartment
finds no sense in this.
Batman could do it
from the skyscraper over the parking lot
to the other skyscraper.
To the right eye it’s perfectly clear
how to get from the roof of the house
to the roof of the hut.

The left window
in constant hum.
The right one in countryside tranquility.
The left one – fumes from exhaust pipes,
the right one – smoke from the stove.

Looking from east to west
cats live to the left.

Transiency

I tied the tree
to the pole with scotch tape
I temporarily extended its life.

I can’t have breakfast.
I’m just tossing
“I could never do that”
aside.

Waterfall burbles along the boulevard.
How come it doesn’t deafen all the animals
flowing down to the highway?!

He’ll find a place to anchor his car.
He’ll go somewhere. He’ll do something. He’ll live.

An hour pouring into time.
Rush of everything through every possible exit.
Liberation is austerity.
If you don’t want to,
practice capitulation.

Anchor

When time catches me
standing at the traffic light
I have a thought about the world.
Lanterns are pretty in twilight.
Down at the end of the boulevard
a ship is anchored.
It’s not there.
Down there, before it, calm seas
colonized highway,
lights spreading out into the distance.

To be a swallow

In my eyes plane trees bloom,
Brodsky sailing in my purse,
scents flow through my nostrils.
All our people have gone somewhere
and here in the streets foreign languages celebrate May 1st,
which the Gypsies know very well:
they follow trams with trumpets
exchange joy for pocket change.

In the distance, while fountains hum
and flowers bloom in parks,
all my people in me are close,
as well as those that are not mine, but could have been.

Life guides me
past books, Gypsies and bugs,
it leads me to pass,
followed by the wind
and the scent of cotton candy.

Chestnuts bloom along the way,
outside of the city, grass lays down under the wind.
I am a kind-hearted driver
and I tread on the roads with tires.
With a look I build them monuments.
I see myself through the eyes of some future people
delighted by the freedom of our feelings
and the image of our world:

to follow the black locust scent,
of withered, cozy graveyards and gardens,
to walk down the road, passing by
stalls selling fruit,
to return, and leave again.
To be a swallow for a couple of days.

Translated by Vesna Stamenković