Something is happening, but I don’t know what.
A chest expanding and tightening,
the vein walls constricting, those grooves, glands,
releasing immense bitterness over Zagreb.
That’s what the sky is like these days: a nightmare
without a bit of holiness. A sketchbook in which many things
have and have not been drawn, the rustle
of millions of legs on the move.
Nightmare, voices repeat, nightmare,
you repeat. The sharp stripes down which
rain descends into its ruts; fingernails, surely fingernails.
Leaves tied around wrists, because it’s autumn and these things
painlessly pass. Water is boiling
in pots. Dogs blossom black. Those who approach me
approach the blunt evil: nightmare, I repeat,
nightmare, they repeat. The entire sky has
huddled into the clavicle, and in the sheer noise
no one can hear each other. Everything’s new, and everything’s foul,
everything in Zagreb. Eyes, plates, things
across which we look at each other. All holy, all sharp,
all dogs, all our dense voices. The speech
of a city eager to bite, pine trees, a flock, something
in the air, under the ground, in the walls; something
above us and somewhere else. Something is happening,
I don’t know what.