1.

How many times have you seen this treetop,
its leaves quivering or at peace,
its twigs thin as burst
capillaries on an eye;

that tree trunk, upright
as an exclamation mark,

and the branches, spreading aside
as if fumbling for something.

You were afraid that you would not find
the words for a poem,
that you might lose it:

as if a poem could disappear,
vanish, turn into silence, into air.

In autumn, the tree used to lose its leaves,
in spring it would get them again.

So it seemed to you.

And the acacia was there, under your
window, unable to move -
except in a stormy nightmare.

2.

The fallen leaves roll along
the asphalt, slowly changing
their colour, from green to dark brown.
More and more they resemble
faces of children at dusk, when the day wanes.

So many times you watched that tree
and it offered itself to your glance,
indifferent, with its breath abate.
Its root hair, its tissue, the juices that
feed the body that wriggles
and breaks away from the firm embrace
of your consciousness. Maybe you do not see it

but the tree looks straight
into your eyes.

3.

Those leaves, green and soft as words,
decaying and rotting, going back
to the earth, wherefrom they sprang.

Are you still afraid
that the poem might escape from you?

The poem does not throw away its words.
The verses - whom can they return to?
Who do they come from at all?

You are still at the window. Watching.
The treetop, that murmuring whirlpool,
focuses in a point
as small as an eye pupil.
The asphalt is like the white of the eye.
The wind slides over it
like an eyelid over the eye.

The earth has your features.
And this is not a window, but a mirror.

How many times have you approached it,
and you never realised that,
never noticed.

Translated by Zoran Paunović