Sibila Petlevski Poems

Lying quite at her feet,
veins cut, in a field of wheat,
he expects her face would relax
in a smile. Teasing flex,
...

Meadows, acres of meadows and gravitational fields.
Crushed to death with hundreds of my own shields,
Unarmed, stark naked like a slug, buried on a rock,
I escaped myself eventually, turned the key in the lock.
...

Wet leaves on a stairway. A slow wind still drawling
Weasel words from the night before. Cats prowling.
Is that little Alvina weeping: her long, unkempt hair
Stuck in the chimney again? It sounds like a fanfare
...

Maudlin, stumbling', falling senseless
to the ground, I used to show
my little bruises like exhibits,
pleading people not to touch them,
...

The spirit enters the eyes of some individuals
in the fateful moments and never more:
at birth. Then they cry. And on the very
end when the others do that instead of them.
...

Worlds lay cuckoo's eggs for each other
and therefore, each time when illusions
with which our home is overcrowded
open their small, greedy and ugly beaks,
...

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
...

We blew the balloons for six whole days,
thought there was no other way one could
frame the breath. Manna was falling from
the sky on our ways, sweet and tepid like milk
...

A cobweb has spread its perfection between
a green sprig and an old branch. The weak
and the strong combine forces in keeping
the thread. Enlightenment got itself entangled,
...

'Quando yo murera quiero tus manos en mis ojos'
[Kad umrem položi mi dlanove na oči]
Pablo Neruda/ Sonnet LXXXIX
Kad bi se usudio pokriti mi dlanovima
otvorene oči, vidjela bih Venerin brijeg
na tvoj ruci i krenula uzbrdo da se uvjerim
što je s druge strane. Taj jednostavni bijeg
od smrti bio bi sličan premještanju jastuka
s uzglavlja na noge. Nasukala bi se arka,
kovčeg izdjeljan od samo jednog komada leda
na blagoj, toploj uzvisini. Na mah učinjena varka,
uključivala bi zamjenu boje kose i spola,
puštanje parova lažnih životinjskih vrsta,
divnih kao što su plamenci s nogama do pola
sraslim s vršcima vrbina granja, i onih malih
umjetnih ljudi kojih je tebe toliko strah,
spojenih usta na usta da iz njih ne pobjegne dah.
...