IF YOU DIE AT DUSK
If you die at dusk
It won’t be snowing black snow over the city.
One heart will light string of stars
over your last words
and send away a night from your asleep fingers.
If you die at dusk
on your way from the cinema
children from the suburb
will pick up bunches of field flowers
in which you will immerse your leaving image
and you will wish to laugh
when from a distance a train emerges.
If you die at dusk
It won’t be unnoticed.
All you loved will know it,
by accident or unavoidable,
long and painful,
or just for a moment, at a glance.
If you die at dusk
I shall wait for that night
in the town which we haven’t been before
I’ll take you into the garden
of blossomed oranges
to look at the sea
like it is the show
we have directed ourselves
and which promises catharsis.
If you die at dusk
I’ll sail with you easily
Like the paths of childhood
And we shall be two shiny, sliver clouds
Two chords of a tender sonata
Composed for a divine harp
But never played.
If you die at dusk
You’ll trick all others
And you will follow only my voice,
The one which promised you, one night
In the ancient Smederevo
Essential date,
referring to this, present life
and you only said: maybe in another life.
If you die at dusk
Everything will happen the way I wanted to be
And you will have no choice.
You will love with the strength of
All your former loves,
With ardour of youth which has escaped so suddenly
And poetry in which you have found meaning and salvation.
And you, now, after this poem on poem
choose and die, if you must die.
My shadow still standing at the door
and waving at an innocent smile of someone who used to be a boy
who has lost track and forgotten the magic word.
© Duška Vrhovac
Translated into English by Aleksandar Malešević
