Duska talks of the many sides of poets in an inward looking verse, seeking comradeship, at the close of the poem.
Poets are a gang,
pretending nomads,
indecisive interpreters
of banalities and eternity.
They are useless seekers,
intemperate lovers,
hunters of lost words,
the spies of roads and seas.
Poets are vain gardeners
of overgrown royal gardens,
vanguards of star derailments,
messengers of sunken ships,
desecrators of secret paths,
crafty repairers of the Ursa Major
and the Ursa Minor,
collectors оf astral dust.
Poets are thieves of illusions,
troubadours of rejected utopias,
seducers of any kind,
tasters of poisoned food,
prodigal sons and professional seducers,
heroes, which spontaneously
put their heads at the guillotine
at which they are also executioners.
Poets are the crowned guardians
of language’s proper being,
lovers of unsolvable mysteries,
charlatans and pimps.
They are the favourites of gods,
tasters of magic drinks,
and crazy squanderers
of their own lives.
Poets are the last offshoots
of the most delicate sort of cosmic beings,
cultivators of the soul’s white flowers,
unreliable creators of untenable worlds.
Poets are interpreters of lost signs,
carriers of important messages,
a warning that Life is endless
and the Universe an unfinished project.
Poets are fireflies on the junkyard of the Cosmos,
conquerors of the colourful rainbow belt
and performers of the holy music
of the cosmic birth.
Poets are invisible companions
in the silence of sense and absurdity
of all the visible and the invisible.
Poets are my only, true brothers.
Picture design, Anumita Roy Different Truths
Duška Vrhovac, poet, writer, journalist and translator from Banja Luka, ex-Yugoslavia, graduated from the Faculty of Philology, Belgrade University. She has published 20 books of poetry, which have been translated, in more than 20 languages. She is one of the most important contemporary poets from Serbia. She has received important awards for poetry and the gold medal for the ‘generosity, dedication, perseverance and creative contributions… made to spread the culture of the nationalities of the Republic of Serbia’.
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