Elichka

“Places We Love

Places we love exist only through us,
Space destroyed is only illusion in the constancy of time,
Places we love we can never leave,
Places we love together, together, together,

And is this room really a room, or an embrace,
And what is beneath the window: a street or years?
And the window is only the imprint left by
The first rain we understood, returning endlessly,

And this wall does not define the room, but perhaps the night
Your son began to move in your sleeping blood,
A son like a butterfly of flame in your hall of mirrors,
The night you were frightened by your own light,

And this door leads into any afternoon
Which outlives it, forever peopled
With your casual movements, as you stepped,
Like fire into copper, into my only memory;

When you go, space closes over like water behind you,
Do not look back: there is nothing outside you,
Space is only time visible in a different way,
Places we love we can never leave.”
― Ivan V. Lalić

“Come sleep with me: We won't make Love, Love will make us.”
― Julio Cortázar

“Trees like traveling

A tree

is always

thinking of

the day when it will set out on its journey,

as it stands, rooted in one place,

immobile.

It flowers,

invites insects and the wind,

hurries to bear fruit,

whispering,

“somewhere far away,”

“somewhere far away.”

At last the birds peck at its fruit

and the wild beasts come to nibble.

A tree needs no backpack, no suitcase, no passport to travel.

It hitches a ride on a bird’s belly,

stealthily making its own airship,

and, when the day comes, it sets out abruptly,

into the sky.

The seed falls.

“Here’s a good place. I can see a lake.

I’ll stay here for a while.”

It becomes a seedling and puts down roots

and, like the tree from which it came,

it too begins to dream of the day it will set out on its own journey.

When I touch the trunk of a tree

I understand how it aches:

how it loves to travel

how it yearns to wander

how it writhes, longing to be a nomad.

translated by: Greg Vanderbilt”
― Ibaragi Noriko

“Tiger got to hunt, bird got to fly;
Man got to sit and wonder 'why, why, why?'
Tiger got to sleep, bird got to land;
Man got to tell himself he understand.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Cat’s Cradle