Cave

find me a comfy cave, not a damp one, i think,
nor a dark one, or one of cold stone.
i reject your cynicism, despise
your privilege, coldness, wealth, all useless in my eyes.
i would not choose them. I long to see through holes in rock the distant sky,
in my home of precious dryness, precious rock
adorned with fresh gorse, scented.
i embrace this outpour.
i am safe, without a care or fear in this dim and comfy cave.
i paint images, paint poetry, write, imagine, think.
i might even find a wild dog
for company, one I can keep, every day an adventure for just us two.

Kim M. Russell, 6th April 2023

Image by Ivana Cajina on Unsplash

On Day Six of NaPoWriMo, we are making use of the daily resource, Poetry International, a source of contemporary poems in many different languages. Our challenge is to take a look around Poetry International for poems in languages we don’t know. Then we should read the poem, think about the sound and shape of the words, and the degree to which they remind us of words in our own language, and use those correspondences as the basis for new poems.

Having studied linguistics in the 1970s, I have some knowledge of various languages, so it took me a while to find one I’ve not come across before, Croatian. The poem is by Irena Matijašević:

KAVA

treba mi crna kava, ne samo  trenutak
nego duža kava, u koju stane
nevjera i cinizam, tvrdoća
pa prijelaz, ispijen, dno, mekoća  svježeg taloga
a on se ne pije. ionako se moram skinuti s bijelog poroka,
nazovimo to previše šećera previše bijelog
i tražim nešto gorče, oporije.
otpor zapravo.
život, onako kako uz bijeli dim ide crna kava,
malo uzemljenje malo podizanje, ritam, izmjena, trenutak,
mi se dogovaramo
utorak, može utorak, jedan dan veljače, poslije dva

© 2007, Irena Matijašević

By the way, I did not read the English version, but will leave that to you, the reader. You can do that by following this link.

18 thoughts on “Cave”

  2. Today’sprompt was too difficult for me. I think I’ll leave this one for a different day.

    Your words are splendid and form beautiful images in my mind.
    Like “adorned with fresh gorse, scented.
i embrace this outpour.”
    And “i paint images, paint poetry, write, imagine, think.
i might even find a wild dog”

    And think and write all day in just such a cave. Thanks. Kim. Lovely.

    Liked by 1 person

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  5. I love your title Kim…and i must say, today’s prompt is really difficult but your poem is brilliant…i will read the English version of the poem to which you took the inspiration.

    Liked by 1 person

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