Επιμέλεια: Εύα Πετροπούλου Λιανού
THE BEAUTY OF THE UNIVERSE
Just love
Truth and justice
They are my life,
The joy of my heart.
That beauty
And the heart
Of the Earth needs,
The beauty of the universe
From the depths of the sky.
In words, that’s what
I’m talking about,
I burn with them
And in them.
AILING FOG
Winter is ailing and oddly grey
Clouds bear no rain and no snow
Their faces anemic, mournful.
Behold, even fog, ailing,
Lingers low above the hill.
It has nested high up above,
Refusing the valley, finding it reeking.
Well, it’s not my doing, man claims.
Fog sends him a note from its hill:
You are a fiend, demon, devourer and slayer,
Your soul is heavy with sin, you cannot move on.
I call you a liar, lady FOG…
Fiend yields not,
Bursting with sludge, raging and abrupt!
TO THE POET
Do you write? A question keeps
Ringing in my mind.
The same question
That you used to ask
All your friends
While you lived, Poet.
Woe is me, and I’ll make you sad, too,
For I want to tell you
That I do not write, Poet.
I do not write. For it is difficult to write
About a spring swayed by grenades,
About a summer wiped away by fires,
About a fall which smells of death,
About a winter that sighs for snow.
I do not write. For everything is even worse
Than it was while you walked
This tearful land, Poet.
Woe is me, woe is us,
But woe is not you, Poet.
You wrote down all of your suffering.
Biography: Zdenka Mlinar, writes poetry and prose, but also short-form pieces (aphorisms, haiku …). She published eight independent collections of poems and is a member of several literary societies and associations. She writes using the Croatian standard, in English, and embarks on the adventure of writing in Croatian dialects.
She published haiku poems in many domestic and foreign journals and anthologies.
Her haiku poems are represented in the bilingual Anthology of Croatian Haiku Poetry “Unharvested Sky 2” (2008-2018). Her name has been recorded in the Register of the Haiku Foundation, and in 2019, 2020, 2021 and 2022 she was in the TOP 100 haiku poets in Europe. Her poems have been translated into English, Italian, Romanian, Spanish, Romani and Macedonian, and many have been combined with music.
For her work, she received a number of awards, recognitions, commendations, certificates, cups, medals…
