Tomislav Čale

Chasing the Sun

translated into English

by
Stefan Wattles
CHASING THE SUN

Life is merely chasing the Sun.

All of us breathless
From a strange desire
To follow it.

As do the stones and grass

So too the birds and men.

And whoever falls behind –

- Freezes.

Whoever chases too closely –

- Burns up.
CAUGHT UP IN THE WIND

I enjoy stepping into the wind in an oversized shirt

And letting the wind whip it around
As if it were a flag...

Then I carefully ponder:

Where does the wind end and the shirt start?

Where does the shirt end and my body start?

Where does the body end and...?

MIRROR

Today
As if I were a mirror
I hadn't taken anything
Of the world

I returned
Without holding back
That which
It had given to me
SELF-PORTRAIT IN BLOOD

Metamyelo. + Myelo. + Promyelocytter; B (10E9/L)

0.03 <0.05
Leukocytter; B (10E9/L)
9.19 3.50 - 8.80
Trombocytter;B (10E9/L) 293
145 - 350
Neutrofilocytter; B (10E9/L)
5.90 1.50 - 7.50
Hæmoglobin; B (mmol/L) 9.2
8.30 - 10.5
C-reactive protein[CRP] (mg/L) 12 <
6.0
THOSE WHO KNOW ME

Those who know me superficially

Believe me to be careless and cheerful

Those who know me slightly more

Believe that to be merely a guise

Those who knew me best

Are gone

Only I know
How I feel
To others I give
What I have ripped from myself
Be I tzar or slave?
UNDER THE STARRY SKY

One day, every star will become a dagger.

(Menacingly and frigidly
Heavenly blades will shine).

One day, when they start to fall,

There must be a dagger for me.
(It will surely delve deeply,
To the core, to the very bottom).

One day I will be dying slowly

Impaled by a star
Under a malevolent sky.
DESERT

Even now at times it occurs

That in my own heart
I find a vast desert
Burning yet frozen
Lifeless,
Beginningless and endless.
I still know not of a better solution
Than to let the sand flow
Through time's gargantuan hourglass
Until the last of it flows away...
LAST TRACE OF A GREAT KINGDOM

My city razed
Its walls crumbled
The gate breached

Temples burned
Ancestors' sacred ashes
Scattered in all four directions

Secret treasures revealed

Fortunes spirited away
Not even a coin for the Ferryman

My springs clogged
My wells poisoned
My land haunted by circling spectres

And before I join the spectres

To unknowing eyes I leave this inscription
The last trace of a great kingdom.
A REFUGEE LEARNS DANISH

Another encounter with an unknown sea.

Carefully we approach one another

And gaze at our reflections.

We compare our infinities and depths

Bashfully showing off our monsters.

The new overwhelms me

Flooding my hitherto secure shores.

Every word like a gentle dagger

Pierces me,
Teaching me
Things which I already know
NO MORE ROOM LEFT FOR ME
(REFUGEE'S LAMENTATION)

There's room for Chinese merchants

For whores from the Ukraine
For Italian carabinieri
For Spanish "Peacekeepers"
For Turkish consuls
For British spies
For all the bastards of the wide world
Yet there is no more room left for me...

There's space for majestic villas

Space for torn bridges
Space for eerie houses with sunken eyes
Which blindly gaze in our direction in the night
There's space for churches and mosques
Whose towers and minarets pierce the heavens
Until it bleeds in the crimson sunrise
Yet there is no more room left for me...

There's room for brigands and heroes

For the new rich
And the old beggars
For the crippled, blind, heavyhearted and abandoned
For my late father and my still breathing mother
Yet there is no more room left for me...

There isn't any room here either.

Tears of a child
From a cloud not known or seen
Fall heavily
PANTA RHEI

A poem is like a river

The one who dives in

Is different from the one who emerges from it.

So too does the poem change

One does not simply dive into the same poem twice.

And the one who writes it

No longer resembles himself
For he has traversed an unending path
Of white paper.
THIS IS NOT A POEM
(for René Magritte)
An image is not a word
A word is not an image
However
No stroke of a quill
No swing of a brush
Would have any meaning
If we didn’t believe the opposite to be true
TICKET TO HEAVEN

Even after all my sins

Of which there are plenty
And which are not small
I believe
That this poem
Will serve me
As a ticket to heaven.
REASONS

Some write to fend off madness,

Others because they are already mad.
Some write to fend off death,
Others, to fend off life.

Some write to destroy,

Others to create.
Some out of love,
And others out of hate.

Some write to discover,

Others to avoid being discovered.
Some to put to sleep.
Others to awaken.

Some write for the masses,

Others for the chosen few.
Some for fortune,
Others for fame.

I write for it all...

WORDS

Shall we ever
Encounter words
So rich with happiness,
Words like bridges and rainbows,
To use them to occasionally flee
From this recurring sorrow
Of silence?
WHAT DID THE AUTHOR MEAN ?

Muffled voices
Regular roll call
Reading the segment aloud
And the eternal question:
What did the author mean?

The arduous trudge from word to word

Alliterations and assonance
Metaphors and assimile
Metric analysis
What did the author mean?

Historic analysis of the time period

Conditions in the country
Drawing parallels:
What was happening in Japan at the time?
What did the author mean?

Biographic footnotes
Memories of comrades
The writings of chroniclers
Critics' reviews
What did the author mean?

But it is all quite simple-

It is merely the light
Scattering across his paper...
POETRY

A colony of ants
On white paper
Crickets' tune
Above their heads

Still above
Still above
A head in the clouds
Clouds in the mind

Still above
Still above
The Sun
Which pierces
The clouds

To give warmth to the crickets

To shine the path
For the ant colony
Walking on the white paper
PARANOID

Covert orders
Open and closed societies
Lodges
Committees
Foundations
Boards of directors
Transnational companies

Letters with no senders

Handed by strangers' hands
The ring of telephones
Answered by none
Codes
Cyphers
Passwords
Which we ponder
Yet are unable to decypher

The missing
The purged
Parallel worlds
Secret stories
Plots and conspiracies
Hidden by glass smiles
In the front pages
And on the other end
I
Alone and rigid
Like a fetus
Like a fetus on the operating table
While they routinely insert
A capsule smaller than a grain of mustard seed
Under my skin
Under my consciousness
That will from this moment
Dictate
Different poems
YOU'RE TALKING TO ME

You're talking to me
It is me you're talking to
In this empty room
Dangling
Above an empty street
In a city
Devoid of people

You're talking to me
It is me you're talking to
At this late hour
When time has ran out
For yourself
And myself as well

You're talking to me
It is me you're talking to
With your last words
Which will find no record
Which will be lost to all memory
Apart from mine own

You're talking to me
THE JUDGEMENT DAY ARCHIVE

Two men
Of torn shirts
And unkempt beards
Eyes bloodshot from lack of sleep
Smoking in a dimly lit room
Gazing at what unfolds
Upon the screen

They keep track of meetings and agreements

They know of every decision
At the moment of its conception
And they record every one

One of them
Speaks into a tape recorder
„He's reading
What that madman
Wrote about us...“

With disbelief you raise your head from the notebook

And swivel your head around the room

He continues:
„He's stopped reading for a moment
He's in a state of disbelief...“

You shake your head

And return to the poem...

This they record as well.

DON'T LOOK BACK, MY SON

Cameras and screens

All around you
Following you since birth
Following you since conception

Caught in a web
As are all your friends
Of which in reality
You have none

You are being served lies

Front page news
Which they fabricated
A few months ago
Put them in a freezer
And dolled up
Like corpses

They poison you with the food you eat

They feed you varied toxins
They sell you medicine
That remedy
Imaginary disease
They ripped out your heart
Decimated your tongue
Massacred your thoughts

They took your ancestors' relics

And cast them to waste
Forcing you to
Spit on them

Break free, my son, and flee

Run away and don't look back

Don't look back, my son

FRATERNITE, EGALITE, LIBERTE

FRATERNITE

It's delightful to have a brother...

You needn't be his guardian,
Unless he disagrees.
Then you send him
To faraway lands
And you take good care of him
Behind a fence
Until his mind has changed.

EGALITE

Mirrors are superfluous-

All faces are the same.
Smiles and grimaces
Similar to the point of non-recognition.
Everyone looks like everyone else.
LIBERTE

Our cages are more spacious that before.

The dungeons well lit and warm.
In each cage a screen
At which we gaze
Stories tailored for us.
(At times I wonder if someone is watching from the other
side).

Security nets,
Which save us from falling,
Firm, but soft.
(At times I believe we've been caught up in them).

The bars are nicely decorated and as good as invisible.

(At times I wonder if they have been installed into us).
MIRRORS

There exist mirrors

Flat and well polished
That reflect us
Perfectly.

In them are mirrored

Eyes
Faces
And hands
Just the way they are.

There exist mirrors

Curved
Bent
In which we are larger
In which we are smaller
In which we are set upside-down
And completely deformed.

In them is mirrored
Our hidden nature
Just as it is.

People say there is a Mirror

With which we meld to
In which we drown ourselves
As if in a deep lake
Which brings us
To our own selves
Ourselves as we were
Before we possessed
Eyes
A face
Hands
And our hidden nature.

In order to find this mirror

We must shatter all the mirrors
That came before.
THAT WHAT DOESN'T KILL US

That what doesn't kill us

Brings unto us rebirth

That what doesn't give us birth

Kills us
Every day
Anew
DEATH IS THE HUNTER, MY FRIEND*

Death is the hunter, my friend

She stalks and lurks
Impatiently waits,
Examines and tightens traps already laid.

You expect to get to sixty, or seventy,

With any luck a few more,
Yet you feel her panting down your neck,
Her breath, her stench already present.

And then she takes you

She plucks you
You were,
Now you're already not.

Where may you be?

In her lair?
In the Empire of darkness?
You are nowhere.

Death had captured you,

To gather the strength,
To hunt the next prey.

* Said once Don Juan to Carlos Castaneda

BWV 1056

When the deceased

Begin to rise
From their resting places
Redressing themselves
With their old bodies
There will be no awakening
Of angelic trumpets and horns
Yet this patchwork of sounds
Of Leipzig's old maestro
SUPERHEROES
(9/11, 2001)

„Where were you“,

We told them,
„On that day?“

Where were you when the blast was heard

When the dead fell from the sky

You weren't there, Superman,

To turn the planes around!

Neither were you, Spiderman,

There to tangle them in your web!

And all the rest of you...

Where were you?

Where were you when we needed you the most?

Superheroes, superheroes,
Why hast Thee forsaken us?
A friend of mine passed away yesterday

The news found me on Facebook

An old photo of his

With innumerable
„R.I.P.“s
In the comments section

Surprisingly he hadn't shared anything

Regarding his death.
No: „I'm dying“,
No convienient post
Nor selfie

Perhaps he was too distracted

With texts, comments, likes
To notice Death
And how he quietly crept closer

His beard, hair, and nails,

Will still grow
While on his profile
So too will comments and requests to meet up

He is no more

R.I.P.
EXORCIST

On this night I will expell from you

All the demons
All the foul spirits
All the devils
With which you have
Until now
Used to torment me

I shall show no mercy

Towards your bated breath
Your hoarse groans and shrieks
And wild electric gaze

I shall whisper into your ears

Chants of expulsion
And douse you with
Holy water

I will not falter 'til the dawn breaks

'Til the roosters call to awaken
'Til you fall into slumber
Into sweet dreams,
My sinless Angel
YIN & YIN*

Soft and soft

Gentle and gentle
Moist and moist

Curvy and curvy

Weak and weak
Dark and dark

Cloud and cloud

That float together
In the silent night

Warmed by Luna
Who holds them
Within her power

* for OKO YONO

CLOSE READING

To read what is written

Between two letters
Betwixt two words
Amidst two thoughts

Between two beats of the heart

Betwixt two breaths
Two views
Two steps

Between human and human

Man and Woman
The Yin and the Yang

Between two drops of rain

Betwixt two waves in the ocean
Amidst the low and high tides

The faces of the Moon

Sun and Moon
Heaven and Earth
A COSMIC FEAST

Stars
Feasting
On one another

Dwarves
Who devour
Giants

Black holes
That suckle
The marrows of the stars
Milky and nutritious

They drink up a star

Until there is no more
To warm themselves up
In the eternal frost
Of the Universe

A rich cosmic buffet

And from here we

Who point our gaze
Towards the heavens
And collect the crumbs
Of stardust
THE SINKING SUN

The sinking Sun

Already casting long shades
Across the whole world.
PORQUE TE VAS

The Sun just as it is

Rises and sets
Spinning around
And not one path
Leads
Anywhere

My silent sorrow
I adorn with words
I let her
Leave
Yet she patiently
Awaits
Beyond the door

I feed on
bitter knowledge
I drink toxic
Experiences
I feel it like a
Snake in the bowels
Return to routine
Safe ports are awaiting me
I'm sinking again
Everyday life
Each day followed by the next
Unbearable!
WHAT IS LEFT

Every day tore a little away

Every night cast a little shade
Until I only had left
Emptiness and darkness
WHILE HANGING

We had barely
Clung on to
The morning
Leaving behind
The blind howl of the night

The solace
Of a new day
To the point of irrecognition
Similar
to days past

A pair of mice
One black one white
Nibbling on our
Lifelines
We grow not towards the heavens
But towards the Earth
Not upwards
But towards the deep

Not towards the light

But towards the dark

In the dark abyss

Our true life blooms

At life's end
When we wither and rot
And when they stamp the ground in which we lay
From our widely branched roots
New stems will grow
Life will sprout anew

hands

faces

and eyes
POEM ON THE HEART

Being blind at heart

they flayed his skin
and under they found
the starry sky

They found an eye instead of his heart

and a heart instead of his eyes

They buried their heads in the sand

in order not to be found
by his enamoured eyes

He lifted his eyes to heaven

and seated himself among the stars
leaving his heart to us

Saying he would be coming back

to ask for it.
A tiny seedling
Transforms into a great tree
Reaching the heavens
REVOLVER

When I hear the word culture

I reach for my revolver
To shoot all those bastards
Who reach for their revolvers
When they hear the word culture
POETS

In every
Military base
Lies but one
Unaccomplished poet

Waiting for orders

That are highly confidential
About upcoming slaughters
And so he dips his pail
Into his poets' well
To procure from it
Innocent and dull
Names
For them

Olive Branch
Horse's leap
Steel Tiger
Green Dragon

In every
Military base
Lies but one
Unaccomplished poet
And comes up with metaphors
For murderers.
GRATITUDE
(For Leonard Cohen)
This way
I express
My personal gratitude
To Mrs. Kelley Lynch
Whose greed
Causes
The unexpected
Descent of Yikan
Off of his mountain
And into our hearts
And the flicker of his voice
Deeper than ever
To rumble once more
Above of our heads
ADVICE FOR A YOUNG POET
(For Danilo Kiš)

Your life is difficult

Almost like the lives
Of others around you

You're a stranger in this world,

So investigate it.

Find the centre

By exploring the extremes

Believe not in equality

You are different
(Everyone is)

Believe not in diversity

Hundreds of flowers
Have already wilted

Sing to freedom
But don't forget
That you're a slave

Forget that you're a slave

Remember your
Divine roots
Awaken,
And while you're awake keep dreaming

Be reborn
And realize that there is no
Death

Write about Life

And about Death as well

Write about everything

Write
 SEVENTEEN SYLLABLES
(for Sodo)
seventeen syllables
there is nothing…
yet, there is everything
WORLDBUILDING

To call a stone a stone

A tree – a tree
A bird – a bird...

And so on again
To fill the world
With empty words
Depleted.

And so on again
To build the world
With fake words
Ruined.
ARS POETICA

Alone I walk the shore

And carefully pick out
Stones

I toss them
So that they perform
A number of bounces
Upon the mirror-like surface of the water

This makes them travel far longer

Than I could
With my own throw
Let them fly
Before upon
Their final bounce
Sink to the abyss

Likewise I carefully choose my words

For this poem
And I toss them to you
As skilfully as I can
Until their descent
Into your abyss
Tomislav Čale was born in the non-existent country.

He lives in once the happiest country in the world.

His poems are translated into various intimate

languages all over the world.
Translated into English
by
Stefan Wattles
I express my gratitude to Nadežda Silaški, who found the
way to translate this book into English and kindly made
necessary corrections; to Stefan Wattles, whose inspiring
translations sometimes sounds better than the originals;
to my old friend Denis Markić, who came with the idea of
translating poems into English, and who had supported
me all the way through.
A special thanks to my daughter, Isidora Čale for her
beautiful drawings and to Denis Markić for his
incomparable photographs. Both of them have
generously ennobled this book with their illustrations.