Sanja Lovrenčić

River Certainly Does Love the Flood

about the book:

Sead Begović: Walking with Pebbles in your Shoes (fragment)



"In her first poems Sanja Lovrenčić distanced herself - in an elitist manner - from the descriptiveness of reality and certain of its themes, now she relaxedly approaches them with elements of fairy tales - dreaminess, linnenness and cottonness. Suddenly, for her, everything is utterable without the emphasised use of the notional labyrinth... Sometimes she will reach for the ties that are close to a child's concept of the world. Naturally, it is only an excuse. We are dealing here with a skilful mimicry form the childlike tameness and imagination into the complexity and agression of adulthood. For our time, she is really a gentle poet (but not a coy nor a complaining one) who, by no means wants to use the parasitic additions to beauty, but neither does she want to use those purely technical, artificial means with "witchcraft" intentions. She is interested in a "walk with pebbles". It all probably contributed to her being the laureate of the Cyclops Award for the best poetry collection in the year 2007..."



four poems form the book "River Certainly Does Love the Flood"

snowqueen

frozen tarn in her room she had

and nobody saw it

two-edged hatchet she had

and kept striking the ice

when nobody saw it

closing her eyes

she pushed her hand into crevice –

as she drew it out it was all glassy

hand, foot, head, she plunged her whole body –

now street lamps turn out before her

and nobody sits on the chair beside her

and tiny bells in her head keep clanging all glassy:

cold beast I am

wintry queen

the one who battles with shreds and splinters

for the room from the beginning

wasn’t fit for me to live in, that’s why –

gardeners talk II

there is a visible tree

and there is the invisible one

the visible is green as it should be

has branches, leaves, bark

in some places damaged by time

but all that is as expected –

invisible tree is red and black, golden

and purple, what grows upon it

you cannot call leaves:

pendants, tendrils, bells and

flashes of lightning –

the invisible tree has a glaring

crystal outgrowth

blood-dripping branches

teeth, tongs, feathery prickles

snowflakes it throws out of itself

so that at least one branch could have

a white cover –

here, you see, is the same, the same hand

writes this and that, cuts and glues,

bids welcome bids farewell,

congratulates, condoles –

in the invisible? it swings the sword,

strikes the bell, carves the love message into the sea –

whatever it may be doing here,

there it lights the fire, it lights the fire

leaving invisible ashes behind it

what has she got

she's got a problem, the voice said

she's got a golden mantle that grows when she grows,

you don't see it but it's there



she's got a problem, the voice said

she's got wild flowers round her ankles,

alive, with tiny roots in the air



she's got a problem, the voice said

she's got a sky, red and green, to fly

a hammoc between invisible trees,

she seldom reaches it but still 

she's got a problem, the voice said

a ribbon from dreamislands in her hair,

a piece of ocean woven in her dress



what does that woman have, the voice said,

but her strange look and her silence?

a stubborn smile she’s got

whirlpool of hidden laughter 

life in a white baloon

in a white balloon

it’s milky and opaque

there’s warmth and light

at noon

but

in the evening you may think

perhaps it’s not so white…

it’s round

and you can find

no sides

in a white balloon

all is all

every place equally good

to lie down

in a white balloon

there are no stories to be told

and the view is everywhere the same

you may turn around

forever

and you won’t feel it when you fall

for falling doesn’t hurt

so much as breathing

in the white balloon

translated by the author

 

128 str, hardcover

2006

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