Lidija Cvetkovic

After a decade of absence it’s the crumbling
facades that strike me — chunks of paint split off
like states on the map of former Yugoslavia.
In the tenement flats everyone is spring cleaning —
...

In this grey town, Popa’s
‘white bone among the clouds’
the buildings stand still
like shocked witnesses.
...

What was it like when you were young?
War had left its talismans . . .
From forests and fields we brought in
bombs and metal wrecks —
...

My father draws a blade
along the wired frame
as we watch perfect rectangles
of honeycomb topple into
...

from the pig’s slit throat a red carpet unrolls
all his life he’s been fed for this
...

At first I only sensed the obvious —
in the body’s crypts there were signs
but I couldn’t read their textured meaning —
there was nothing but the shedding season.
...

1

At first I only sensed the obvious —
in the body's crypts there were signs
but I couldn't read their textured meaning —
there was nothing but the shedding season.

I mapped the crests and troughs
looking to heat to tell me the seasons;
but the knowledge was always retrospective
(you only know the highest point
once you have fallen — and because)

I'd carry the sky in my pocket-mirror
if my iris would flush lilac in the bower.
I'd grow a sparse black lace of plumes
from my elbow
to my wrist, speckles of my skin.
Instead I must decipher this body's innuendo.

2

We row in the shallows, suggestion of shadow;
tannins' wash of gold makes luminous beneath
ornament of rotten log, grace of stone.
We glide beneath the bellies of water birds.
Effortlessly they double themselves
in the water's black stillness.
The repetition of ripples, comforting
as when your tongue through the dark of me
like a leaf fallen in sweet water.
Loops of light sew the skin of paperbarks.
Without rain the logs will elbow through
to the harsh light of day to become dead-wood.

3

You hold my hand through the slit of plastic curtain.
The doctor comments on my socks and my
womb appears on a screen, displaced there,
lunar, strewn with shadows.

I wish for a better reception as she
takes the measurement, the egg's diameter.
I turn my head to the side — through the window
a frangipani blooms; I can almost smell

its sickly clusters of scent. The sky
presses down with all its grey weight.
I feel your fingers come to life
as I clench my fist around them.
...

My father draws a blade
along the wired frame
as we watch perfect rectangles
of honeycomb topple into
a stainless steel bowl.

From a hard earned
78 centimetre TV screen
a voice fires . . . massacres mass graves
like bullets into our lounge room
shooting father. Blood
thick as honey runs along
his fragile frame.

On the antenna outside
crows congregate for attack
on the raw liver and heart
he set out as bait.
Father waits by the shed,
air rifle aimed, and fires
a bullet of revenge.

Long ago in his motherland
as he dozed beneath a poplar,
a snake supped nectar
from his angel trumpet ear,
the translucent vessel
of his wisdom. He foresaw
the scenes that flash
before us on the screen.

So we packed our grief and
headed for the land of his dreams
the step-motherland
who'd gag his deepest cries
with lumps of creamed honey.
I watched my father's tongue
sink to the clay riverbed
of his mouth like a stone.

My ageing father
nursing his swollen knees
collapsed under two decades
of laying tiles, when at dusk
he'd return throwing dollars
in the air like pollen.

My father
rescuing drowning bees
and ducklings from his pool;
stuck in the prickly middle
between mother and me —
calling truce between
the warring sides;
bringing in honey
unaware of the sticky
trail he leaves behind.
...

1

from the pig's slit throat a red carpet unrolls
all his life he's been fed for this

the matron of honour lays birds' eggs in her braid
they'll seal the nuptial kiss with their hatching

the bride's kin descends from the hills making wide gestures
with splintered hands, carrying the scent of humus and wolves

they meet at crossroads and laugh through the ruins of their teeth
as they hand the groom a gun

when he shoots the apple off the bride's head
a seed flies into her eye and grows into a seedling

clumsy virgins flirt with guests' lapels, pin rosemary
for fidelity, flaunt drops of blood from pricked fingers

the bride holds back from pulling a loose thread
off the priest's vestment lest it unstitch him

she back-flips her bouquet towards a young widow
marked with mourning, but the wind blows it back

the groom's hand mounts the bride's over the knife
his thumb crushes a frosted rose beneath the arbour

when midnight snips the marionette strings
the bride and groom collapse, cannot hold each other up

the groom chops the slender apple tree
and carves crutches, etches a heart in her iris

2

an apple tree grows from youth's eye
youth saw through its white bow

an apple thumped youth on the head
youth was never the same again

they cut the apple tree to protect youth
somebody etched a heart on the stump

that's all that remains in youth's eye
and a flicker now and then
...

In this grey town, Popa's
‘white bone among the clouds'
the buildings stand still
like shocked witnesses.
Pigeons coo in the ruins of a high rise.
Amid dandelions and debris
a security guard dozes in the sun
in his hand a cigarette smokes itself . . .
pigeons overhead, ash in his lap.

Refugees sell Lucky Strike
and Marlboro smuggled in from Kosovo
they cane smell a cop a mile off
can disappear in a blink.
They are the invisible people
they are the dirty laundry
in Milosevic's basket piled underground
far from the hole in the wall
where he drops his bundle.

Meanwhile, in full light of public eye
Slobo's making links
crossing bridges he's rebuilt
bragging of progress
to visitors from the East.

Everybody's working on an exit scheme.

In an internet café a guy with dreads
extrapolates the physics of tofu
to a blonde bombshell
who's sipping Nescafé — the latest thing
to hit Belgrade since the air raid.

On a street corner a woman, barefoot
sings old socialist songs —
Druze Tito mi ti se kunemo
da sa tvoga puta ne skrenemo . . .

Nostalgia tugs at the heart of a man passing by

the heart which lies behind ‘I Love USA'
rebellious on his t-shirt
and he drops a Deutschmark
at the altar of her feet. She kisses him
not for the Deutschmark but for paying his respects.
A red smudge brands his forehead
like once a star.
...

Conversations with my great-grandmother

1

What was it like when you were young?
War had left its talismans . . .
From forests and fields we brought in
bombs and metal wrecks —
a strange sort of harvest —
to melt and shape and sharpen
into picks, sickles, axes, ploughs.
We trusted neither land nor sky
and prayed and crossed ourselves
whenever in the open.
We grew cherries, sold cheese
wove hemp into rope and cloth;
we thanked the lord for the corn bread loaf
coarse as it was it glowed like a jewel
in our mud and straw hut.

What was it like to be a woman back then?
My lot could not afford a daughter,
though I washed and scrubbed and loved
them all I could. On my wedding day
when I clung and cried, my mother consoled,
‘You'll wear a cotton skirt there
you'll eat bread made of wheat, white as snow'.
As I rode off on the cart drawn by our cow
the accordion began to play, I turned to wave . . .
but the sky had collapsed behind you.

And on our wedding night . . .
First night and he found the frayed seam of you.
He pulled loose a thread to undo all you'd stitched up,
when in a tangled mess I fell at his feet,
‘Don't waste your tears. The land is dry.
We're out of salt. Cry me a barrel by morning!'
I faced the next day split as a fallen fruit, plum-blue.
You became an ice-crusted country
Your voice a fish that nudged in the deep.

Year after year it was so . . . with him devastating
and you picking up. He felled saplings, spoiled crops,
with a deluge of fists he pounded down.
In secret I collected seeds, sowed and tilled the land
I knew so well in darkness.
I carried the sting of nettle, the strength of oak.
When it got too much, my eyes would follow a fly
spiral up. As it'd settle in a corner
something in me would still with it.

Was there God?
It was useless with God. When first I turned to him
he spat it was my lot! Even the saints betrayed me.
Sweet martyr Paraskeva, giver of sight, whose icon
I adorned with flax and birch, turned a blind eye.
So I called on the Great Mother, ‘Strike
with your lightning! Turn him to stone! Cut
the thread, his life you weave', I called into a hole
that with bare hands I'd dug.
Silence but for the echo of your plea
the crude snigger of crickets.
I sought a gipsy for a curse — ‘Scoop the dust
from his footprints wherewith he leaves his soul
cut a lock of hair, his powers it holds, and coat
with clay or mud. As the flames crumble mud to dust
so will wither he.'

The axe was the last resort?
That night I breathed relief — an empty space beside me.
He kept the spare axe under the mattress —
I felt its head at the small of my back
the handle braced my spine.
Skipping the ritual of plaiting and looping
covering my hair with scarf, bareheaded
I tip-toed past my little ones to look for him in the yard.

It was another drunken night with mates and booze and cards.
He'd passed out beneath the cherry tree
where I found him sleeping soundly
and blossoms falling, falling . . .
I crossed myself for forgiveness
more out of habit that faith,
I gripped the axe handle
lifting it above my head —

2

Twelve at the time, standing at the window above
her daughter counted
while she fingered a wart on her thumb,
‘How like a toadstool', she mused
as she set about to uproot it, ‘ . . . five six seven',
by the time she drew blood she'd counted the last thud.
Twelve resounded in her head like a spell of sleep
till the buzzing of a fly brought her back
and she heard the familiar drip from the white belly
of cheese hung in a gauze sack,
‘Now like a cherry bitten in half'.
...

After a decade of absence it's the crumbling
facades that strike me — chunks of paint split off
like states on the map of former Yugoslavia.
In the tenement flats everyone is spring cleaning —
tapestries, quilts, rugs expel the odours of winter months.

Uncle Uros, not uncle by blood but by virtue of his age,
welcomes me the traditional way: a teaspoon of preserved
quince with a sip of plain water, a shot of plum brandy,
and a cup of Turkish coffee. Dark sediment shifts invisibly
as we talk. To close the ritual we turn over our cups.
Fare unfolds before us.

He orients me on the city map
marking crosses where bombs fell, following with pen
the ‘charred alley-ways' of his beloved Belgrade.
He'll be off at dawn to queue for sugar —
The worst thing's the company in these queues
the fools who swear by Milosevic to the grave

while he pockets their pension.
I too had a chance to emigrate, but the state offered us
this flat…then my wife died. It was then he planted
the mass of roses by the wall. Over the years
he's guided them to cover the cracks.
April now. The wall exposed; mere buds.

Next day uncle Uros's knee is bleeding —
something about a slope and rain and a neighbour who
was supposed to help and the son who hadn't called —
Liars the lot of them! I ask about the opposition rally
while dabbing yellow on his flowering knee —
A mere two thousand, if you believe the Politkia.

And the familiar smell I cannot place — Sour cabbage
of course!from the basement where we crammed in
round pickling vats playing cards and chess when the blasted
sirens kept us up. One good thing, young Slobodan
learned to play chess; I let him have my kind now and then.
I'll be damned if I let his namesake win in September.

He is finished! Traitor to his own name. We'll pickle him!
When his knee stops bleeding, he purs us sljivovica —
To clean the blood from the inside. In unison we sink them —
To life! And he totters off to tend the roses, while I
feel the blood rush, my cheeks bloom.
...