MAIDS
by: Aleksandar Ristović
(translated by Charles Simic)


One is in the cellar,
the other one is in the attic.
One carries a lamp and a platter into the dark room
   for guests sensitive to cold,
the other sits behind the house
staring at the moon rising over the nearby trees.
One travels by the village bus forty kilometers through a
   snowstorm,
the other tries to light a fire while sitting on
   the iron bed next to her mother, who is already
   seeing angels like hundreds and hundreds of fireflies.
One weeds the onions, waters the garden, chases a chicken,
the other stands by the window holding before her face
   a rose-colored leaf that gives off no scent.
One is at the table where she diligently polishes
   dishes, knives, spoons, and forks,
while a bee (which flew in through the window) in vain
   tries to find a way out bumping into the curtain
   and the pane,
and the other one smokes strong tobacco
with some good-for-nothing from the neighborhood, constantly
   raising and lowering her eyes.
But soon the night will be here,
and both of them will find themselves in their own beds,
one with a novel on her knees lit by the table lamp,
the other one already dreaming the first dream of that night:
   in which she sees the seashore, the thin line of waves,
   and herself losing pieces of her clothing one by one,
   while walking with greater and greater speed toward
   someone whose face is hidden by a shaddow of an almost
   imaginary rose.

NO ONE WILL WRITE POETRY.
by Matija Bećković
(translated by Charles Simic)


No one will write poetry anymore,
The immortal themes will abandon the poems
Unhappy with the way they were understood and versified.
Everything that was once the subject of poetry
Will rebel against it and its cowardice.
Objects themselves will express what the poets had no courage to say.
The sea--that ancient topic of poets--will leave poetry forever
And return to its grave where it grew up.
The sun--turned ridiculous,
The starry sky--turned into a cliche,
Will forsake poetry.
The roses will insist on their color
And will not agree to the fickleness of poets.
Word freedom will escape and return to its meaning.
Poets will have no language in which to sing.
Nothing will stand between the poet and poetry,
And so the poems will attack poets
Demanding that they fulfill their promises.
The poets will back away from what they've said,
But everything they imagined and prophesied will catch up with them.
Poetry will demand their lives
So that its metaphors may be true and irrefutable.
In generations to come
No one for any price will want to be a poet.
Future poets will have better ways of spending their time.
The free men will not consent to write poems in order to be a poet--
And yet there's no one other way to be a poet.
A tree--yesterday's poetic symbol--
Will wail from the square of its dark past
And no one will be able to equal its lament
Since it knows itself better than anyone else.
True poets will be against poetry
And all over the world they'll have the same idea:
For the sake of its esteem in the eyes of true poets,
No one will write poetry anymore.

IN A DARK HOUR
by: Jovan Hristić
(translated by Chrales Simic)


In a dark hour (there are more and more of them now),
He sits alone afraid to turn on the lights within reach of his hand
In a room that the darkness is slowly filling,
Like some that till then had lingered in the gardens
Where they burn the newly fallen leaves waiting for the first frost.

In a moment now steps will be heard.
Some god is coming to close the door
To one more room in his life
He will never again enter.

He waits for the sound of steps to cease.
The he rises, turns on the light
And stands motionless in the middle of the room,
The last one that remains to him, full of books and papers,
And knows that nothing of what he desired will happen,
Now that what he feared most is already happening.

"My hunger is infinite and my hands always empty..."
by Rade Drainac (translated by Charles Simic)


My hunger is infinite and my hands always empty.

Down city streets at night I carry the moon on my fingers
and leave my sadness under the windows of unhappy women.

I'd give everything and yet I have nothing.
My hunger is infinite and my hands always empty.