Poems translated from Slovenian by Lukas Debeljak
Muanis Sinanović (1989) is a poet, essayist, writer of short stories and a critic. He is an occasional translator, organizer of literary events and works in multidisciplinary projects (sound, performance) He has published three books of poetry up do date. His poems have been translated into eight languages and included in Greek and Checzh anthology of young Slovenian poetry as well as in Europe: an anthology of contemporary European Potry (Kingston University Press, London 2019) edited by SJ Fowler. He has been awarded both for his poetry and essays.
coffee
the sky was uniformly grey all day
long. as before a storm. but there was no storm.
merely a very sparse, stubborn dripping, as if
a wet rag had been hung up there. we woke in cycles,
each time there was a blue screen in the living room
with the writing on it: no signal. we were waiting for something
that comes in decades, something terrifying,
that will completely change our lives.
we knew some will have died by then.
we heard the individual shrieks, commands and actions.
this was a war the sky waged against us.
it was slowly sieging us and preparing its ring.
the wind slammed windows and doors.
in the evening the storm finally came down and we had
breakfast. we told each other goodnight
and headed to our beds, as we had to go to our
jobs early the next morning.
we realized the following day; we had all
dreamed rushing rivers of strong coffee, spreading its aroma
all across the valley.
growth rings of trees
The path, that leads by the river from the small city,
goes through centuries. On it stand the living, but blurred.
Some age-old avenue with citrus orange street-lamps.
Like a sun,
enabling its rays to shine through the rim
of the scroll in the breast. It opens and words
bloom in the body.
It is clear, childhood is the introduction to a greater dependency.
All is in pairs
and the dust that scatters in the return is not the apparition
of death, but an
anointed loss. Wait for it to calm.
The tear-stained child’s eye of the old man
is anointed
with the lost color of hair.
The gentle rust on the picture’s edges peels
and there lies the hue.
Then the footbridge across the river and the perfume
breathed by trees.
Under the breath in the breast is groundwater.
The eye gathers from there.
It’s moist inside. The great draught is coming
in the buzzing, the worries, the business of doing business,
the worries over the office-chair. Cracks emerge.
A machine places itself on the wrong spot
by the factory and slices the moon’s angle.
The machine’s shine rebounds into the cracks.
Cough, cough,
sound,
storm,
the dust of what is lost scatters
and spins and gives armies shelter.
And also hinders orient nation.
Neighbors on the path by the river don’t recognize each other.
What is the greeting of trees
and what lies in the line of the tree’s growth ring?
SARAJEVO II
I dreamed that Sarajevo
didn’t want me,
but then when it let me in
as if through an automatic carwash, tentaclecovered
rollers touching me,
and lights in front of me,
I followed them.
then it turned out
that Sarajevo didn’t want me,
the city drove me away from the banks of the Miljacka,
into the hills, onto streets from which new
streets unfurled onto new hills
that I will never reach,
I was driven out by the rising water
flooding the valley, water
in which others could breathe.
I ascended the spiral
streets and looked at how the lights shone
through the water and how
they scornfully shone on the hill
above the opposite bank of the Miljacka.
and then I saw that I wasn’t alone,
they galloped up with clutched
bristle bouquets,
ascending the hill, clinging to the edges
of the garbage cans,
melancholy eyes, like the crowd
of which you are a part, a crowd of individuals,
they accompanied me and they didn’t,
that’s just what they do,
citizens on errands in the city,
they, the strays dogs of Sarajevo.
