To Neighbors (This Morning My Flesh Is a Half-Mast Flag) by Marko Pogačar

the shoes left by the door prove the living exist

To Neighbors (This Morning My Flesh Is a Half-Mast Flag)

by Marko Pogačar¹

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Honey melts in tea, completely, unlike me in you
and you in classical music,

overly long phone calls, never a table when you need one
perpetually broken elevators,

steps unfolded into eternity, like a conversation about politics, 
and when someone notices that totalitarianism and democracy

differ only in numbers
the picture disappears and all starts anew: voices drip from walls, 

bodiless, and the night descends onto the palms, like a miner
into a drill-hole, still, the shoes left

by the door prove the living exist. but what does it mean to live, 
while the winter arrives rolling like a cold breath out of my throat, 

and builds a nest in a dark alphabet; all those strangers with familiar
names, rushing, an afternoon broken in two, like Korea,

the tea in which honey has already melted, inseparably,
and that viscous liquid is love; how do I get to you; how do I reach you?

1. Dead Letter Office (2020, Word Works) translated by Andrea Jurjević