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[Croatia] Miroslav Kirin

                                     IT WOULD NEVER HAPPEN TO INDIANS

The ground – still wet from the afternoon shower. Each little grass-blade persistently returns the raindrops to the sky.

Having overheard this harmless dialogue, we failed to notice the nightfall - suddenly it was there, between two cups of tea.

The clouds cleared up and I invited you to go out and watch the stars with me.

Little do we know about them but it won’t diminish the pleasure of watching them.

Later on we resume drinking tea on the porch.

On the floor – like an empty wallet, a crushed frog. Seems I brought it

on the sticky sole of my sandal. Didn’t hear a thing (as if the death of a live being ought to be audible).

It would never happen to Indians, you say, they walk barefoot out of respect for tiny beings.

I will never walk the night garden again, I decide.

Why don’t you write a poem about it, you add having finished reading a collection of ancient Chinese poetry.

But the thing is, how to write a poem about a crushed frog out of respect for Chinese poets?

                          YOU, WITH YOUR HAIR SWINGING LEFT-RIGHT

They don’t allow me to read on the tram, especially you, with your hair swinging left-right.

You’re tossing it onto the page I am reading, splaaash, all the words vanish and I have to look up at you.

What would Jane Hirshfield say – why did I stop reading in the middle of her poem To Judgment: An Assay?

You change my life with your hair

“as eating an artichoke changes the taste/ of whatever is eaten after”, says Jane.

Hair is of a rather odd nature, seemingly dead: you can cut it, you can burn it. Yet, still grows.

And then my lively fingers comb it, get entangled in it, their life gets entangled, someone else’s life does, they change their taste.

Suppose I suddenly wish to see your face as you’re tossing your hair.

At its best I can only hope to see the flash of your hands, that will come out of the blue

to raise your hair, comb it with the fingers, and then let it mercilessly splash  across the pages of my book,

like foamy water from the bucket thrown out into the street at the end of the shift  at the barber’s. 

About the author:

       MIROSLAV KIRIN, a prominent poet and writer in contemporary Croatia. Was born in 1965 in Sisak, Croatia, and lives in Zagreb. He has been writing since 1984. He is the author of five volumes of poetry and the novel. His poetry and fiction has been translated into English, German, Hungarian, Romanian and Russian. Od nje do vječnosti, poetry (From Her to Eternity, 1989, Goran Prize for poetry); Tantalon, poetry (Meandar, Zagreb, 1998) ; Album, the novel (Vuković & Runjić , Zagreb, 2001); Zukva, poetry (Vuković & Runjić , Zagreb, 2004) ; After the Renaissance, poetry (Matica hrvatska, Sisak, 2004); Jalozi (Di/Alogues), poetry (Vuković & Runjić, 2006); forthcoming: Zbiljka, poetry – the autumn of 2009. Awards: 1989  The Goran Prize for young poets under 30 years of age for the manuscript „From Her to Eternity“; The Jutarnji list Prize for the best fiction in Croatia in 2001. Poems published in anthologies: Strast razlike, tamni zvuk praznine (hrvatsko pjesništvo devedesetih), Quorum 5/6, Zagreb, 1995; The Passion of Difference, the Dark Sound of Emptiness (Croatian poetry of the 1990s), selected by Branko Čegec and Miroslav Mićanović; Koreografija teksta (pristup korpusu hrvatskog pjesništva iskustva intermedijalnosti 1940 -1991), Meandar, Zagreb, 2003.); The Choreography of Text, (the intermedial setting point to Croatian poetry of the second half of the 20th century), a selection and a study by Goran Rem; Utjeha kaosa,  Zagrebačka slavistička škola, Zagreb, 2006; The Consolation of Chaos, an anthology of Croatian poetry, selected by Miroslav Mićanović; Rušenje orfičkog hrama, antologija novije hrvatske poezije, VBZ, Zagreb, 2006.; The Demolition of Orphic Temple, an anthology of recent Croatian poetry, selected by Miloš Đurđević; Isto i različito, antologija i studija hrvatskog pjesničkog naraštaja devedesetih (VBZ, Zagreb, 2006); The Same and Different, an anthology and a study of Croatian poetry generation of the 1990s, a selection and a study by Sanjin Sorel; Iz vijeka u vijek - hrvatska poezija (Slavjanskaja poezija, Pranat, Moscow, 2007).