Rajko Shushtarshich
THE FRUIT OF HEAVEN
THE FRUIT OF HEAVEN
(hologram of paradise apple)
Apple among apples,
shurely, one of the sorts of that fruit
(Alpine-Adriatic-Pannonian) –
so can be said today.
Global visitor said flattering to it
that it had been a heavenly fruit –
such as a bit of heaven,
»small part of heaven«.
But the apple has been offended,
and so visitor had to correct himself:
»great piece of heaven,«
he said, and he was smiling.
Yet honoured as a heavenly fruit of the Slovenian countries –
Carinthia, Styria, Carniola –
it tempted, seduced
many of potentates.
A devil bit into it,
not only a borderer,
if he could occasionaly
into live flesh.
They have been gulping down,
piece by piece,
all to the core –
to its seeds.
The fate to be completed,
worse than all that,
it was tortured by the disease
from the inside.
It has been nibbled by worm of betrayal,
from generation to generation
that has been happened to it
such as it was damned.
How it could happen
if the worms would not have done their job:
»the scrap is good,
better than the whole apple«.
The pale hologram has remained,
a scrap which cannot dream any more
of its former image:
of the fruit from the tree of knowledge.
PEARL
In the water of a great lake a pearl was born,
it considered not to be more beautiful of all the others;
but in the interlacement of colours,
in the glare of light,
in the fracture of rays
it was peculiar,
it was a pearl unique.
One day pervaded its mind a thought
which he could not get rid of:
I was born in water,
I want to be water,
vast, unlimited, eternal.
Slowly, barely noticeable,
it began to dissolve;
its great wish
was starting to realize.
But it never became a water;
when it has been completely dissolved
it was no more existent.
Translated from Slovenian by Ivo Antich