Zupan Uroš:
Morning

Birds  are rising out of the fog, rising

out of a lake, somewhere between the water’s mirror and the air.

Their wings touch the waterline, their silhouettes

are reflected off it  and return to the flying

bodies, their beaks cut the air, each

one recalls the exit from a dream in its proper place,

water dripping from their wings, their

feathers, water dripping on the surface of an unknown lake,

drops fall on the surface and break it,

leaving circles that ripple out towards

the banks, towards harbors of the mind.

Among the pillars of dreams we move, between the hands

of the wind speaking from on high, teaching us

how to read its manuscript, teaching us the first

steps of its dance. Stones will soon  

see, screams will tint the air,

souls which floated, angel-like, above

the cities at night, glide through the stillness of cathedrals,

keeping watch over the silent movement of rivers,

humble and wild, souls which  journeyed

shamelessly between perversion and

the pure waters of God’s gaze, now return

to bodies.

The light forces its way into stones and trees, into

the heart of rivers, the earth’s pores, into glaciers’ lungs, into

the oceans’ silence, layers of air quiver under  

beating wings, they’re in perpetual ascension, sunbeams

trickle through reeds, through the mist

floating on the water.

And then, suddenly, there is time for everything  to grow still,

when the sky stops breathing, when a scream is petrified into

silence, when life and death stand face to face.

Then the birds rise even higher,

alone, claiming the moment, their beating wings

start to resound in the empty, unborn spaces

of stellar corridors, in the newly open

eyes of the world.

We rise, given back the unity never

taken from us, we rise so that each may   

drink from the pitcher of our own lives, we rise to

observe the course of the shadow cast by the unknown

Word, which echoes in our ears like a metaphor for the heart.