The unusual collection of poems by an insufficiently known author — Marko Poropatić — confirms (more than any other contemporary poetry book published in Serbian language in recent years) some of the propositions of the renowned “theorist of poetic imagination,” Gaston Bachelard, articulated in his iconic The Poetics of Space. In an exceptionally successful manner, Poropatić conjures intimate images, intertwining introspection with memories bound to specific spaces. Likewise, each of his departures outside himself, out of loneliness, out of halfheartedness, is associated with a departure from a room and attempts to find something (others, or peace, or insight) within the boundless realms beyond protective borders. Though subdued and peering inward, the book is not deprived of passion (that artistic natures never lack), but is entirely void of pose and mystification. The narrativity present in most of the poems is constrained by a polished style, which does not allow loquacity, but instead offers images of great artistic power.
INNER JUNKYARDS
Guests come to my room. Off the lips
Flow the vowels. Difficult it is to distinguish
Dialogues from monologues. We open
Our inner baggage. Left on the table,
An abundance of details shall remain, that last
Until morning, inside the ashtray a graveyard
Of cig butts. Our roads lead
To an all-night convenience store.
We could have gone somewhere far,
Yet here we are on our way to the store. Step
By step and we’re stepping through childhood.
Do you feel, too, the writhe of goodbyes
Had entered us long ago. Without coming out,
By no means coming out. We’re bad parents
To our inner children.
VEGETARIAN MONDAY
You reveal to me how to free myself from
The numbness of body and the thoughts that open
The door called escape. You do it all
Virtually. The plan is ancient and sound,
Yet cruel to those that hesitate.
Everything around me is food for someone. Even the concrete
Is gnawed by the years. The tram’s horn
Has pierced the silence, announced the end of
The afternoon round. The skeleton of my poem
Demands flesh.
Through the window the first dark enters. Unwillingly
I learn fresh news that seem
Like the old. December, curled beneath
The window, lies still, waiting its turn.
Lighted windows, a book opened
On the table, a bitten apple:
I observe the world brought to a halt in serenity.
ON CONFLICTS
There’s a moment when you can extinguish
The fire, get tired of yourself,
Repeat the coursework you already learned
Ages ago. Afterwards the peace wants to
Evaporate. The verbs carefully do
Their job. The eyes are on another,
The other is the wolf, your sight gets eaten by the dark.
And you run, run the whole night backward.
VANISHING TECHNIQUES
We’ll be tourists in some faraway city
Exotic and ancient. By the sea
We will study its genealogy. Once
We’ll disappear from our own lives.
We’ll get hypnotized by the color-bathed streets,
We’ll become generous beyond all
Measure, we’ll give vent to fervor.
If a rainshower starts, the studio apartment will
Keep us together. We’ll have faith
In God’s ingenuity. We’ll be missed
Only by our addresses. Once we decide
To return, we’ll bring them souvenirs
that resemble us.
SPECTACLE
The apartment is repeatedly getting used to me.
I’ve been wearing it out and renovating it for long.
I’m welcomed by the traces in the residue of dust.
The parquet is bare, with the shelves I’m on familiar terms.
Beneath the window’s a cleared space for
Intimate conversation. I empty the suitcases,
Drive the dirty stuff clean out into the open.
The room is witness to my dreams. I open
The laptop’s mouth, listen to the voices, scroll through
YouTube, I disinfect the past. The apartment
Recognizes my shadow parading
On the walls. I have an idea how to rid myself of excess and be
Mobile like air, yet rage
Creeps in between the lines. Now
Music assumes meaning, or is it just a
Deceit of voices. Movements of arms and legs
Seem like a dance. Tonight I turn loneliness into
Spectacle.
THE OTHER POEM FROM THE ROOM
The room in which I wrote my first poem
Explains quite little, rarely do I return
To it, in it are the traces of all those
Who went through its walls; it simply
Exists like the other poem I’m writing
Inside it. Decades have passed, my hand
Repeats the same movements at the same table.
Ink is not for surrendering,
I am taught by poetry. Firewood I throw
Behind the bars. Clumps of paper I lower
Onto the flame. The fireplace, like poetry,
Must not be without fire.
Translation by Igor Vesović
