Ivan Lalić

Love in July

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There is so much rich, contradictory imagery in “Love in July” – it came to mind the other day when I was thinking about pens and handwriting, and very few poems I’ve come across in my life referred in such evocative ways to handwriting as does “Love in July”. In fact the imagery overall is vivid in ways that make no sense to describe (the poetry, the imagery, speaks for itself)…

Love in July
–Ivan Lalić
I
Open this evening like a letter,
Its handwriting spotted with blood of birds
Devoured in the bright lava of the afternoon.

Open this evening like a rose,
That dust, that bronze, and that sweat on your skin,
That constellation that breathes.

Open this evening like a letter.
I’m hidden in its handwriting
Like a shadow in the still leaves of a cherry tree,
Or like noon in our blood.

Comes night grown over with rain and cherries,
And the wavering diamonds of sudden freshness.
Open this evening like a letter.

The date is illegible, time without beginning,
But the signature is clear:
I love.

II
The taste of the storm in the stalk of the invisible rose
That you twirl absentmindedly between your fingers.
Summer golden and dark.

But there’s no wind, and the rain glitters
On your words like phosphorus
On the seams of the water.
Summer golden and dark.

The lightning that travels slower than memory
Will never again give us light in this place.

That lightning still buried in snows and flowers
In its journey around the year.
The taste of rain on your lips,
Summer golden and dark.

“Places We Love”

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Places We Love

-Ivan Lalić
Places we love exist only through us,
Space destroyed is only illusion in the constancy of time,
Places we love we can never leave,
Places we love together, together, together,

And is this room really a room, or an embrace,
And what is beneath the window: a street or years?
And the window is only the imprint left by
The first rain we understood, returning endlessly,

And this wall does not define the room, but perhaps the night
Your son began to move in your sleeping blood,
A son like a butterfly of flame in your hall of mirrors,
The night you were frightened by your own light,

And this door leads into any afternoon
Which outlives it, forever peopled
With your casual movements, as you stepped,
Like fire into copper, into my only memory;

When you go, space closes over like water behind you,
Do not look back: there is nothing outside you,
Space is only time visible in a different way,
Places we love we can never leave.

Mesta koja volimo

Mesta koja volimo postoje samo po nama,
Razoren prostor samo je privid u stalnom vremenu,
Mesta koja volimo ne možemo napustiti,
Mesta koja volimo zajedno, zajedno, zajedno,
Pa zar je ova soba soba ili je zagrljaj,
I šta je pod prozorom; ulica ili godine?
A prozor, to je samo otisak prve kiše
Koju smo razumeli koja se stalno ponavlja,
I ovaj zid ne međi sobu, nego možda noć
U kojoj sin se pokrenu u krvi tvojoj zaspaloj,
Sin kao leptir od plamena u sobi tvojih ogledala,
Noć kad si bila uplašena od svoje svetlosti,
I ova vrata vode u bilo koje popodne
Koje ih nadživljuje, zauvek naseljeno
Običnim tvojim kretnjama, kada si ulazila,
Kao vatra u bakar, u moje jedino pamćenje;
Kad odeš, prostor za tobom sklapa se kao voda,
Nemoj se osvrtati: ničeg van tebe nema,
Prostor je samo vreme na drugi način vidljivo,
Mesta koja volimo ne možemo napustiti.