Walter Safar
Nameless Grave
Demonic fires blaze in the eye of the stone palace,
and me,
I only stand in the dark beneath the sky
that reaches its invisible hands
out towards scores of nameless graves.
For callous politicians,
they are but nameless graves
upon which no one’s tear fell.
They were silently and swiftly buried into the black soil,
without speeches and tears,
without too many imprints
on the black soil.
(They say that everyone’s life is worth attention,
and that the dark truth is that only death equally appreciates each life)
And while they treacherously, silently and swiftly
dug a new nameless grave,
only death was faithfully listening to the crickets
feverishly spluttering away in the dark
to honor the dead poet.
In the hazy grave lies the poet,
like a shadow of many dreams,
and the raindrop,
brought from the honorable mountain
by the honorable wind,
softly and timidly trembles
on the dead poet’s white face,
like an angel’s tear.
And politicians, tycoons, church pontiffs
are sitting in the golden loges now,
ghastly and faithfully acting:
the righteous, the charitable, the Believers,
crying their copper voices
out into Croatian silence,
like a copper bell,
and the dead poet
now waits for one tear
in a nameless grave.
Memories
I am standing in the street of my childhood,
and the blue April sky
rises above me,
glittering like a dreamy eye.
Down here, the wind is marching
behind my dark memories,
tiredly,
but unfaltering,
like a tiller behind his plow.
Tell me, steady wind:
How shall I escape the screams of the past?
For years you’ve been pushing me to all corners of the world,
as I was your unwanted child.
You know, wind,
that with my restless spirit, I belong more to You
than to myself.
From You, I inherited the yearning
to travel the world and seek:
the Morning in a golden cradle,
the Day in an angel’s embrace,
the Night in a bloody dress,
and midnight in black,
that preys on lust
like death preys on life.
I am standing in the street of my childhood,
next to the same window
from which I used to gaze at you, wind,
during my childhood,
and dream of the day
when I would fly on Your soft, sweet back
to a better world,
far away from poverty;
the flies captured in the spider’s web,
the miserable cries of worms
eternally crawling beneath the feet of soulless masters,
far away from the grass
and the tear-swept flowers.
I am standing next to the window
in the street of my childhood,
as if standing next to a bloody cradle,
and the memories,
my ashamed children,
cry out into this April night
with their silent screams,
reaching their invisible hands
out to me.
And I,
driven by the gales,
I am rolling across the world,
like a raindrop
looking for its grave,
in the cracks of the arid crust
of the betrayed earth.
Walter William Safar was born on August 6th 1958. He is the author of a number of a significant number of prose works and novels, including “Leaden fog”, “Chastity on sale”, “In the falmes of passion”, “The price of life”, “Above the clouds”, “The infernal circle”, “The scream”, “The negotiator”, “Queen Elizabeth II”, as well as a book of poems, titled “The angel and the demon”.
