Zupan Uroš:
Noon In Breda

A quiet Victorian atmosphere. Jane Austen lost at the close of the

twentieth century. Mother and daughters, the sound of cutlery,

the smell of coffee which lingers around the room,

the concealed thoughts of cups, the concealed thoughts of furniture,

the smell of carpet, a view onto a garden, which is buried in green

and the stillness of time, moments for which life

and art yearn. A quiet room, quiet music which rises from the

gramophone and which circles around us who are dressed in light. Words, words

remain still in the quietness and, outside, a song of praise sung by the wind,

traveling through the noon hours. Hours caught in ground-floor windows not

covered by curtains. Hours in which our lives are rounded up into a whole.

Smiles which we give as presents, the explosions

of stars in our eyes, blushing faces of women and falling rivers of

hair which flow into the silence like a prayer. And we, how far can we get?

What does our presence promise?

What does the softness of these gestures mean, these eyes, this room,

these unknown landscapes which invite the traveler to populate them with

his hands, with his body made of waves. Noons

which we spend together motionless. Will I ever again see this gaze

that breaks me in two? Will I listen to the falling of your hair? Will I populate this

miracle, this name of yours, Marie-Cecile, soft as

the softness of your hand in mine, now that we say goodbye to each other, this last

meeting, high, high up into the quietness of the air, a Victorian atmosphere,

a smoldering passion which is hidden in the undergrounds of silence. And what is

left? A quiet room, the smell of the carpet which will fill the room

long after we have each gone our own way, the concealed dreams of bookshelves

and ghosts which follow us, the memory

of smiles and the gestures of a mother and her daughters, gestures, that someone

carefully lodged in poems about silence,     about a promise unsaid.

What is left? Verses and someone’s dreams, dreams

sent to the four corners of the sky.