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ROOM

 


ROOM

-       Zvonko Taneski (North Macedonia)

 

Why didn’t they let me change the room
and make me feel better,
now that even the critics are allowed to change their views
and earn more space in the magazines?

They all went for large and bright rooms
with evidently functional furniture,
and I didn’t even complain about the only one new, but hard arm chair,
no trace of the second one, though there should’ve been a pair,
just like literature is inseparable from the science about it.

Why was I not standard guest when choosing the bed,
and was so resolute in my desire to experiment?

Literature needs fresh love masks for modeling:
a water-bed, an exotic partner with different skin color, faith,
an unexpected adventure…

But not much depended on, I thought, what view the window had,
everything depended on where and whose he’d look at
and whose he’d recognize.
“Each room has a mirror”, so I hope mine would have one too,
for it shouldn’t, by any means, be an exception to the rule.

Why does my head look like a syntagmaticaxis
though it is laid softly on the pillow,
and becomes a hypertext when it sinks in deep sleep?

Shouldn’t they have let me change my room?

(Translated into English by Zoran Ancevski.
English language editor: LeeSchweninger.)

 

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