Pietà Poem by Sibila Petlevski

I am the king of the lizards he said that time casually
forming a noose with its tail and while he was
saying that - hanged by its tail - all he was
taking hold of was a twig of some bush with thorns
bigger than himself. so he kept on saying - the world is
always in perfect measure with itself and I am the king
of the lizards - as if he was ready to admit that his muscles
had been losing contact, or intentionally disconnecting

with what served him as a prop. and his prop was intertwined
with the scepter made of twigs from which he has remained
suspended for a long time until he came out as a slow-motion
picture of the parting of the ways; so slow that it seemed
almost as if he intended to stay that way, as if he could
and might not be received in the arms of the mother
who was convinced she would be able to keep in her arms
that to what a thorn has always been a better support.

Translated by Miljenko Kovačićek and the author