Lower Row – Middle

after Piero

and what’s with this accumulation of clouds

in the west how many ways through

the valley and up over the ridge

not there on that side that goes down

and on over the porous forest’s edge

and shines at the foot of the limestone’s and pale

brick’s spectrum how many paths will the water

in gray streams wash away dripping

under La Verna but exactly these

remnants are as undesirable

as the red frame of a kite that’s

at the same time here and any

second it’ll disappear perhaps in this very night

the thin black string melted into

the background one moment dark the other glistening

you went down on your right knee

like when in the shallows you step on an urchin

the sulfur and the cover of grass and water

settle just like the wrong turn

one move and the morning scatters sputters

not at all loudly along the vertical of

light then shadows then shorter and

shorter paths that like lines

lead diagonally back from the first

one to the fifth the circle is just

an unneeded witness that cannot

satisfy the thirst as complete as

the drop of sun in the well’s smear

Translated from Croatian by Tomislav Kuzmanović