24th of November

Listening all day long an amateur recording

Of Leaves of Grass

Female, matured voice

Serene, kind and motherly

Reading for nineteen hours straight

Words enshrouding young bodies

Stout, handsome soldiers, forsaken

Left behind at the battlefields of yore

The Maccabees of Alamo

Old honorable Quakers

Patriarchs with their herds, radiating vitality

Tanned bearded men of twenty-seven

Swimming in ponds

Like Solomons of old

With scented garments

Infusing their bodies with perfumes

With sandalwood, and ointments

And myrrh and hyssop

Old Testament men

Brave, tall, hearty, handsome

Smelling like Esau the hunter

The fragrance of the fields, and grass and dew

Like Gedeons of old

Men who fascinated God and angels

.......................................................

These songs, Roman collects of youth

And sunshine, and laughter

And wilderness

Glassy fragments of dusks and dawns

Fine faces, drops, bellies, curled chest-hair, loins

the laughter of young friends

Preserved on  ancient wax cylinders

From centuries ago

Crackling, distorted

Ripe with Purgatories of

 Murmuring, interfering spirits

Entrapped ghosts speaking with an echo-

Lovers, long dead

Enfolded in soil, mute, separated now

In recesses of the earth

Delivered to God's final judgment

Living in truth  at last

The soil so full of useless memory

.........................................................................

Faces of ancestors-warriors,

Healing me from my shame,

Teaching me to accept my body

Speaking softly but firmly

With their hundred years old oak-voices

Lale and Drekale

Noahs and Abrahams of old wars

Blessed by Melchidesedeks the patriarchs

John of Peć, hieromartyr

And Ruvim, Cherub of Montenegro, anointing

Near the stream

Savage brave, wild wild wild men

Archbishop and High-priest

Ancestors in Morača, attending councils

Among prophets and angels with firm faces

Attendants infused with the strong aroma of incense and lambskin

Men with sabers invigorated in blood and fire, battling near Dečani

Where the king of the old days lays intact, fragrant

waiting to burst up from his Marble grave with fiery sparks

(This is my version of Milco Mancevski's The Dust)

Their tales of battles and catastrophes

In old photographs, pale and stern Ahabs

With that expression on their faces -

As if they managed to see through all these centuries

To return my glance

Aghast by this new vision,

Frozen forever in this all-encompassing stare

Or maybe - as if the very photographs suffered

A certain change after their death

Giving them this new perspective

The long lingering surprise

The great ahhhhhhhhhh

Like the last breath of a hermit seeing

Stirred honeycombs of angels and righteous-ones

The New Jerusalem

Unfathomable, white, consuming

In a minute, frozen revelation

................................................................

Grass scent, wine scent

Old kings and heroes

Robust

The strong-bodied forefathers

With their abiding vitality

The wine cups and strong thighs of forefathers

Pregnant with nations and cities

With kings to be and poets

Their tents in green pastures

Their herds with strong limbs and muscles

Something of it still beating in my worn-out body

Their sensuality and strength in me also

(for I never denied myself anything,

Never learned to submit to puritan rigidity

To want something but not to have it

By a pure act of the will

Due to some moral firmness

And rigor,

To comply with strong principles,

I, very sensual,

Permanently in love

Ready to go to the very bottom

Tender, loving, drunk, celibate)

The laughter of ancestors encircling the hearth

As if infusing the fire with a better life

Singers of tales with their Christmas fasts, vigils, and prayers

Semi-Christianized mores

Their pious ejaculations

Uttered  during hard labor and childbirth

Formed am I by these utterances also

There's something of it in me too

Of those ejaculations and songs

Something in me from the drops of their wine

Of their acceptance of life and strength

They, but wearied by history, in me

..........................................................................

The scented wine of psalms and hearty benedictions

Fair-bodied warriors and wise kings

And blind sages, an army with many and many spears

Enamored, enchanted by this

Kings leaping, dancing among their people

Babes suckling, singing lauds

Matrons and girls

And altars of the Lord most high

In pastures, in saturated fields

Winter with pale fires

Near Bethlehem

With Jesse and Samuel

And chosen champions of Israel

Conferring with each other

Old and wise

Deliberations of the seers and prophets

Overthrown rocks as altars

With burning offerings and libations to the Lord

Most High, upon the Armies

Angel, a strong one, with a staff

Producing a consuming fire

His face hidden under the hud

Just a firm jaw

speaking to Gedeon

In a quiet, manly voice

Voice of the one incapable to be surprised

By a manifold of events

Firm voice, but placid also

And David – able one

with a sword and spear and sling

A voice of a matriarch

Caressing Jacob her son on her lap

A pageant of events and frescos

.......................................................................

Walt Whitman, what is the most important thing about Christ?

_______  that He is beautiful.