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Poetry

An Open Wound

By Tanja Bakić
Translated from Montenegrin by Jim Phelps & Tanja Bakić
Tanja Bakić seeks the textures of the intangible, the familiar, and the strange within the porous border between subject and object. 
Listen to Tanja Bakić read "An Open Wound" in the original Montenegrin.
 
 

***

An open wound
Under the hot earth
Calls me out.
I look at the sky
With another’s eyes.
A star like
An eyeball
Stares at me.
I leave behind
What I once used
To be.
And keep my pain.
Velvet I am now.

***

Your luminous body
Casts up
Mine as a shadow.
A tear falls
Onto a bone.
In the water,
Under the water,
Naked I swim.
This night
Velvet muffles
The dream,
Water,
Me.

***

The winter of my pain
Touches with its fingers my body of dreams.
A voice within the voice
Whispers to an ear within the ear.
Water drinks me while I drink the water itself.

***

The secret of her tear
Hides in her wish
To embrace the light.
The light sullies her,
Wrenches the tear
From its roots,
Taints it with the world.

***

© Tanja Bakić. By arrangement with the author. Translation © 2017 by Jim Phelps. All rights reserved.

English Montenegrin (Original)

***

An open wound
Under the hot earth
Calls me out.
I look at the sky
With another’s eyes.
A star like
An eyeball
Stares at me.
I leave behind
What I once used
To be.
And keep my pain.
Velvet I am now.

***

Your luminous body
Casts up
Mine as a shadow.
A tear falls
Onto a bone.
In the water,
Under the water,
Naked I swim.
This night
Velvet muffles
The dream,
Water,
Me.

***

The winter of my pain
Touches with its fingers my body of dreams.
A voice within the voice
Whispers to an ear within the ear.
Water drinks me while I drink the water itself.

***

The secret of her tear
Hides in her wish
To embrace the light.
The light sullies her,
Wrenches the tear
From its roots,
Taints it with the world.

***

© Tanja Bakić. By arrangement with the author. Translation © 2017 by Jim Phelps. All rights reserved.

[Rana otvorena]

***

Rana otvorena

Pod pijeskom

vrelim doziva

nebo gledam

drugim očima

zvijezda

nalik na obrvu

me gleda

Napuštam

ono gdje

nekad sam

bila

ćutim bol

sad sam svila

***

 

Bjelinom tijela tvoga

Sjenka moja se prlja

Po suzi kost pada

U vodi

Iza vode

Nagost pliva

Svila je noćas tvrda

San

Voda

I ja

***

Zima bola mojega

Prstima opipava tijelo mi snova.

Glas u glasu šapće uhu u uhu.

Voda mene pije dok ja ispijam nju.

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