Immortal Poem by Miroslav Mika Antić I-
If they tell you: I died,
and you liked me,
something in you as well
may suddenly turn grey.
On your lashes a mist,
An ashen trace on your lips.
Have you ever thought
of what it really means to live?
It was a matter of silences,
not words.- Cosmopolis, p.5
As snow on a warm palm
the childhood fades within you.
Worries...
Are there any worries?
Sorrows...
Are there any sorrows?
Up the ladder of imagination
Climb bravely into the youth.
That pretty but devious rainbow
there awaits for you.
And live!
Live completely!
Do not nibble on days as mice.
Chew on air
Race with the wind and the birds.
He stood a while longer, watching a single gull lift
and ripple in a furl of air, admiring the bird, thinking into it,
trying to know the bird, feeling the sturdy earnest beat
of its scavenger's ravenous heart. - Cosmopolis, p.7
For every eternity is brief.
Suddenly: those laughing faces
in some mirror
turn to wrinkled.
Suddenly: a tear lurks
around some corner.
Troubles arrive at fingertips.
Years become more grey.
Suddenly the world, while walking
becomes more narrow
and the laughter more quiet
and quiet
and askew somehow.
So live, but completely!
That is how I did.
Ages only I have travelled
for half a century.
I admit it: silly at times.
At times, the wrong way.
But I never stood still.
I went always.
And went...
Spin a golden thread
out of your aorta
and sew the cracked places
through which the wonders shudder.
And never imagine life
as a scared goodbye
but as a permanent welcome
and constant begining of awakening.
II-
And then, for once seriously
think what it means to die
and where is it that man goes away.
What is it that calls for him forever.
Do not go to cemeteries.
You will understand nothing.
Cemeteries are the darkest fair
and a sad theatre.
Whilst playing with restlessness
and with the unformed,
don't you feel the need
to secretly enter new
layers of mind?
neighboring futures?
I will explain it sometimes
if you find me there.
You know what I'll do:
I'll break your toy called pain,
if you dare.
I am not lying.
I am inventing
that which needs to exist,
only you haven't unraveled it yet,
because you haven't looked for it.
Remember: reality is more real
is you add more of the unreal.
You will recognize me through silence.
The eternal don't speak.
To wise out the wisdom,
cherish the listening skill.
After infinite births
and some petty deaths
once you understand
that all you breathed in
is not life,
really, come by,
so I can touch you with light
and turn you into a thought.
The farthest of futures has its future too,
which hears the call of its future inside.
And no worlds are empty.
That, which we are unaware of,
is not inexistance,
but the existance without us.Nothing existed around him. There was only the noise in his
head, the mind in time. When he died he would not end. The
world would end. - Cosmopolis, pg.6
III -
If they tell you: I died
this is what will happen.
Thousands of colorful fishes
will flutter through my eye.
And the earth will hide me.
And the weeds will hide me.
While I'll be flying high.
Remember: there are no limits,
only temporary limts.
I will sail above you at dusk
in wind slick as silk.
I will unravel horizons,
contoures of ages unborn
and images of future
through the beating of invisible wings.
And as a silent pendulum
swinging in the immense,
I will hang upon myself
as upon a golden belt.
Do you really think my arm,
my knee
or head
can turn into clay,
beech root or grass?
That some tiny secret
or fear
can tomorrow become
silence
darkness
and dust?
I am really from stars, you know.
All made of light.
Nothing in me will shorten or stifle
I'll just return
at some accidental dawn
to some distant sun
my eyes golden. (...)
He wanted to be buried in his nuclear bomber, his Blackjack
A. Not buried, but cremated, but buried as well. He wanted
to be solarized.He wanted the plane flown by remote control
with his embalmed body aboard, suit tie and turban, and the
bodies ofhis dead dogs, his tall silky Russian woolfhounds
reaching maximum altitude and leveling at supersonic dash
speed and then sent plunging into the sand, fireballed one
and all, leaving a work of land art, scorched earth art that
would interact with the desert.... - Cosmopolis, pg 209.
Never bother to ask:
how is one to live but:
how is one not to die
after all these deaths. What did he want that was not posthumous?
- Cosmopolis, pg 209.
If they tell you: I died,
worry not. In every century
someone mistakes me
for tired and old.
Never as many people
in one single man.
Never as many different
in the same.(...)
To be humanly multiple
is not to be dehumanized.
I am divisible with everything,
and yet indestructible.
But his pain interfered with his immortality. It was crucial to his
distinctiveness, too vital to be bypassed and not susceptible,
he didn't think, to computer emulation. The things that
made him who he was could hardly be indentified much less
converted to data, the things that lived and milled in his
body, everywhere, random, riotous, billions of trillions, in the
neurons and peptides, the throbbing temple vein, in the veneer
of his libidinous intellect. So much come and gone, this is who
he was, the lost taste of milk licked from his
mother's breast, the stuff he sneezes when he sneezes,
this is him and how a person becomes the reflection
he sees in a dusty window when he walks by.
- Cosmopolis, pg 207.
And all these wondrous stages
and the renewal of me
are nothing but a whirl
unified,
persistent,
long. (...)
Why then say farewell?
What is it that we regret?
If they tell you: I died,
you know - it is not what I can do.
His hand contains the pain of his life, all of it, emotional
and other, and he closes his eyes one more time. This is
not the end. He is dead inside the crystal of his watch
but still alive in original space, waiting for the shot to
sound.- Cosmopolis, pg 209.
Love is the only air
I inhaled.
And laughter only language
I understand in the world.
I dropped by this place
to wink at you a bit.
To leave behind something
as a fluttery trace.
Do not be sad. (...)
