RETURNING HOME Poem by Uroš Zupan

Dusty roads, a voice that rises from a throat
and dissolves in the desert, the smell of a polished parquet floor
on one September morning, dialogues of light
and shadows we have forgotten to transcribe, a possibility

to be in some other place, though our feet are
indisputably impressed in this asphalt, and time
rebounds like quicksilver in our veins. In all
this we seek shelter, returning home.

The sky above our heads is ruffled, and down below,
somewhere on the right, the calm ripple of the river
never stepped into twice is heard. Somewhere,
for someone, it is so, always so. At home,

things pushed aside into silence await us. And at times
it seems some forgotten bird has fluttered
out of the morning mist, setting off
for the borders of expectation, for life puts itself together

now, in the absence of a face observing its reflection in the glass,
in the absence of a hand sliding down the cheeks for
the hundredth time this evening to learn of the age
of one patiently awaiting us. Calmly the steps echo,

slithering along the moist walls of the night, calmly that
dark river runs, which will turn into silver in the morning,
and calmly the distance which memory may yet measure
grows longer and longer, like these steps, slowly winding

into the arms of an uncertain future.