Branko Miljkovic - Requiem

I 

My blood is my pathway to you

prelude

It's a ground, alas, sometimes often

sometimes too much, a heritage of the winds

and of those that have less than nothing

a big urn with the ash of the only

and the shared death which repeats itself

but doesn't ever burn with time

a ground onto which you'll fall forehead down

you and me and my forehead my battle 

with my own self, that fingernail of the sky and the last light's horizon

those are the landscapes redrawn

from the eyes of dead men whose words

we in vain wished would never leave the Earth

we've forgotten everything except for 

our own death which we are living through

prayer

One shall pray to death for his life

and the silence will save the fossilized skulls

for the rain of faces and skies for sandy doors

and black roses shall bloom

along the roads which stand open for all the winds

which take the ones coming unborn to find their own death

II

We watched as the ones we loved

died standing, now we see

the darkness that the blind don't see, close

your eyes to see the ones that

have given their eyes' day to the eternal night

they keep the Earth on their backs and immobile

we are never going to catch up to them, oh never

never will the time of our death be the same as theirs

we will forever be

separated and dead 

post scriptum

Red birds will drink from our lips

we won't see them

weeds will scream inside half-baked clouds

we won't hear them

III

Blood is ticking steps and death

and once upon a night after life 

blood stops being a bird it becomes

a snake in the grass so the children cry all throughout the night

the dead stand left in vain

burning fires await their return

their night mixes with our day

don't forget to tell your children that

lullaby

It's not a day anymore nor a night, one shall

greet the savages with a dream, birds have

taken the sky up South, sleep, they won't 

come their steps are hard

sleep, love is walking the streets in crutches

sleep, but do not dream of their voice

IV

The night is full of dark angels

haunted ship

carries the burden of a time long lost

and our dead friends

into the birdless forest

one should have crossed the sea

time and space have mixed together

now they're one death away from every shore

light and shadow

over the water they play

a game of life and death

far flows the river

eternal and to no purpose

birds are flying toward the wind

and women are crying on the shores

a man falls onto his shadow

without a shadow or a name 

they stepped into the deepness

for history:

from the blind face of a shipwreck in their

last eyes history had been created

lesson for others:

people are dead not mortal the sun will

pass through our eyes too, unchanged

V

They had built you into an invisible wall

and you were all ready to die

inside one another and it was like that

hello you weird river of salvation

they have been looking for you in vain in the dark occurrence 

of unconscious senses on the verge

of yourself and surprise and they didn't find you

farewell to the city where my memory stops

now you are dead and your body is

an intangible memory and warm

handful of ground a handful of Serbia and us

chorus:

The mouth was full of sand and everyone was quiet

farewell to the city where my memory stops

hello you weird river of salvation

VI

You red star wound of the clouds

handkerchief of blood in the night locked 

by black keys where the dead lay

buried under each other's foreheads

oh you death multiplied with a thousand graves

oh on Kordun the clouds have taken

the fire flower out of their hands which have

with their last movement separated the landscape

into two silences where ash birds cry

post scriptum

In a land where sunflowers are worshipped

they had fallen face first to the East

I seem to have fallen along with them

different than what I might say

VII

Green hill I want to say your name

green hill conceived in the wind's stomach

green hill of the sky and the star of my blood

the sides of the world were fighting over their death

which had been the beginning

and not the end the roads had been looking for them

all around the world and they were nowhere to be found

the profile of their absence is kept a secret

by the night of the green hill their deaths

are the most beautiful star constellations on the South part of the sky

the ground smells of the dead green hill

I hear you with my heart's ears and I hear them too

there, no one who has died is dead

you star of my blood and their green hill

VIII

For those who have wisely used 

their ability to die for those who

have stepped over their corpse for the sake

of their death so necessary to up against death

for those who are now one

because the world is divided by human skin

into two parts and two and two

equals one when the last night falls

for those who drowned

in the waters of the eternal dream just like

the Sun dies on the bottom of faraway landscapes

buried for those whose words

have bloomed from the ground like a medicine and a riot

may the far away sunflowers lower their heads