Forgive Me, If You Can Poem by Vinko Kalinic

by Vinko Kalinić


S. - To the most beautiful boy in my town

I wanted to write you a song, most beautiful verses
that has ever written any poet

for days I've been searching for words where I would hide
my deepest thoughts, I've overturned every stone
I was squeezing my heart like a lemon, like a pomegranate
and I was straining my soul, to clear up and to fill up with wind,
like the ancient fishermen when they used to spread
white sails of their boats

but all letters were not enough
all world languages were too miserly

I wanted to write you a song, I really did
some pure song, clear as a morning
white as a milk from the fig tree
gauzy and gentle, smart, simple
and silent - like a moan of the bell and the shore rustling

hundred times I wanted to write that song,
the song about the most beautiful boy in town
- this, you really were! - and you always remained
a jug of dreams, a bucket full of moonshine,
some sensitively long note on the silky string
which smells of love and invites to the childhood

believe me, I really wanted and I still would like
to carve that verse, to write that song
but I'm afraid, when I shut my eyelids
and concede myself to the zephyr's flow
- I'm not even some poet! -
every word in my hand crush
when from the darkness of impassive mind
your face emerges full of light
and lights up those gates,
like in the rooms of our grandmas,
where those lips
and those eyes
only angels have
and saints too

however, I have never given up to write that song
though, I think more and more, actually, that
I will never complete it

perhaps this is a curse of poets and humans:
we are punished to stand speechless
beside the most beautiful things

like the soldiers on the death-watch
like the boys before the clouds

forgive me, I beg you
as I can't transfuse my heart
into words
- although I would like to!

forgive me, if you can
for I will love you silently
forever