Unnamed Language

by Ena Djordjevic


The sky changing color at night; something I notice
in Vinca, my body less than one short trail
from that eternal river.  My mother once said
that when she met him, my father would swim across
from his country to hers, shaking his hair out when he reached her,
waiting by the river bank in Croatia.
There is some kind of violent purple in the distance
above centuries of trees. A wind carries the sound
of the dead language, exchanged by a couple
passing in the dark. Behind me, the house is full of relatives
I have met once, between us a faint path
of what should have happened, if. Had I known
the words would want me back I would have learned
to read this language.  Now, it raises eyebrows in the markets.
I say bread and they shake their heads.  I speak: tomorrow,
goodnight. Nothing.  Gone.  Coming back here
is like entering a house you know
through a basement window.  Relearning speech,
I am waiting to see a path through trees
when I touch my grandmother’s arm. Soft.
Blood, my mother once said, is the way
we recognize each other, we don’t need to understand.
The river is not motionless, as it appears.  The river
I am seeing is not the sky, the changing
of the light like a pendulum in one direction.
I am one short trail from the river.
One short trail from if.        If is the violent country
I am living in when I speak.  The river can’t cross,
bridge.  The trees by the water, standing or uprooted,
are shadows sloping into the bank.


***
One of the best poems I've read in a while. A friend showed this to me lately, and so I searched for it online. The journal is in http://www.thesmokingpoet.net/id24.html