Blog

During each residency, guests will publish blog entries through which the interested public will be able to track their journey through the locations included in the project.

Ulysses's Shelter 1 (2018/2019) residents: Christos Armando Gezos, Greece, poetry; Lena Kallergi, Greece, poetry; Vasileia Oikonomou, Greece, poetry; Thanos Gogos, Greece, poetry; Lara Mitraković, Croatia, poetry; Jasmina Mujkić, Croatia, poetry; Goran Čolakhodžić, Croatia, poetry; Antej Jelenić, Croatia, poetry; Urška Kramberger, Slovenia, poetry; Denis Škofič, Slovenia, poetry; Aljaž Koprivnikar, Slovenia, poetry; Katja Gorečan, Slovenia, poetry.
 
Ulysses's Shelter 2 (2020/2022) residents: Maja Klarić, Croatia, poetry; Maja Ručević, Croatia, translation; Dino Pešut, Croatia, prose; Marija Andrijašević, Croatia; prose & poetry; Katja Grcić, Croatia, poetry; Josip Ivanović, Croatia, translation; Eluned Gramich, Wales, prose; Steven Hitchins, Wales, poetry; Lloyd Markham, Wales, prose; Elan Grug Muse, Wales, prose; Dylan Moore, Wales, prose & non-fiction travel writing; Morgan Owen, Wales, poetry; Maša Seničić, Serbia, poetry; Nataša Srdić, Serbia, translation; Danilo Lučić, Serbia, prose; Goran Stamenić, Serbia, prose; Katarina Mitrović, Serbia, poetry & prose; Vitomirka Trebovac, Serbia, poetry & prose; Dejan Koban, Slovenia, poetry; Davorin Lenko, Slovenia, prose; Katja Zakrajšek, Slovenia, translation; Tomo Podstenšek, Slovenia, prose, novel & short stories; Uroš Prah, Slovenia, poetry & translation; Ana Svetel, Slovenia, poetry & prose; Thomas Tsalapatis, Greece, prose; Marilena Papaioanou, Greece, prose; Dimitris Karakitsos, Greece, poetry; Filia Kanellopoulou, Greece, poetry; Nikolas Koutsodontis, Greece, poetry; Iakovos Anyfantakis, Greece, prose.
 
Ulysses's Shelter 3 (2022/2023) residents: Sven Popović, Croatia, prose, translation; Marina Gudelj, Croatia, prose; Tibor Hrs Pandur, Slovenia, poetry & translation; Ajda Bračič, Slovenia, pose; Sergej Harlamov, Slovenia, poetry; Tonia Tzirita Zacharatou, Greece, poetry; Marios Chatziprokopiou, Greece, poetry; Ivana Maksić, Serbia, poetry; Ognjen Aksentijević, Serbia, poetry & prose; Jake Butttigieg, Malta, poetry, prose & translation; Matthew Schembri, Malta, poetry, prose & translation; Jan Škrob, Czech Republic, poetry & translation; Marek Torčik, Czech Republic, poetry & prose; Esyllt Angharad Lewis, Wales, translation & prose; Ruqaya Izzidien, Wales, translation.

 

Josip Čekolj: Poems from the book The Decline of Heroes and Dragons

Poems from the book The Decline of Heroes and Dragons

(Junaci i zmajevi u zalasku, Mala zvona, 2022.)

Translation: Goran Čolakhodžić


 

(growing up)

as caterpillars still climbed up my thighs

tugging on those first, white hairs,

saints fell from the skies

one by one

I put away my fear of stoning into a box,

but sometimes it still slithers out in the middle of the night

and licks my shivering knees with its venomous tongue

I’ve seen the fear of death

in the visits Grandpa would pay to the brandy in the cellar

and in Grandma’s worn out prayer book

and in spasms rippling through skin

the fear of self

lies in the hidden flintlock and the blunt knife,

in unconsumed drugs and unconsumed beds,

in forged-iron shackles on one’s wrists

and all those things had to be written in the dirt with a stick

and all those things had to be passed over in silence

and all those things had to be forgiven

 

***

the moon’s eyes have been swollen

with insomnia for billions of years,

sometimes we switch places,

sympathize with each other

I give him my bed, even if it’s no nest,

I offer him my bed-linen, even if it’s no fur,

in return he gives me some violet canvas

I can draw on, I splatter the paint with my hair

and let anxiety drip

all across the universe,

Moon and I sympathize with each other

foxes sneak into my lap

and together we count violet-dusted moths,

then they tell me about swiftness and freedom,

resourcefulness and passion, I feel goose bumps listening to them,

imagining a run in the vastness of ancient times

hidden birds remind us

this isn’t something we’ve been ordered to do,

but we enjoy playing tricks and hiding,

we love masks and being on the stage,

what else is there to do

if we can’t sleep

 

***

under the mask of a bear

you approach the buds of our transience,

you lick the honey clouds and grunt at startled birds

you walk slowly among the beech trees you have wounded,

lowering your melancholy thoughts, paw by paw,

onto the inconspicuous ants,

the mask suffocates you more and more and grows into your tender skin,

it’s flattened your walnut-like nose and bent your strawberry ears

like the corners of a picture book, yet you don’t take it off, fearing touch

fearing the noise of bells and pots you’ve been beaten with

by those who you watched over, fearing the ashes they’ve thrown in your eyes,

the ashes of your falls, stories, truces and proverbs

under the mask of a bear

you wander slowly as if waiting for Gypsies to chain you,

Circus-Performers to cage you, Whites to put a bullet in you

under the mask of a bear

you don’t miss the cross-shaped villages

nor the summits of gigantic, menacing mountains

under the mask of a bear

you’ve forgotten to use your tongue for kisses and song,

you’ve forgotten to use your arms to provide warmth,

you’ve forgotten your crib and your mother and your roars

you’ve become what you’d always wanted to become – a wild animal,

yet lonely

 

***

we grew up in a single swing of the dragonfly’s wings

the windows haven’t seen dawn for months now

and our hands have become transparent in sugar-fish water,

I waded into the rapids to catch at least one for us,

I snatched nothing out but a blue stone for my breath-islands

hands smell brown and they smell of the forest

Grandma smells of porcini and chestnuts,

we have caught the fear

of woodland mice,

we have learned

how to hide

from others

to huddle behind a tree, inside a tree, in a tree,

to transform our bodies into moss

tongues are tired from boredom,

your fingers are tired from severe idleness,

tell me a story about the explorers of warmer climes,

about their terrible machetes and tiger-claw scars,

silk tents and mosquito bites,

about the thrill of some forgotten city

or the splendour of an ancient tomb

here, darkness has already lain down on skies,

it has stretched its paws over the crowns of trees,

it has stuck silence out on its bristly tongue

and encircled us with its tail – that cruel god of ours

my lungs

are dewy fields of hellebores,

ruined white cities for fairy horses

let’s go to sleep in a miraculous pistil

and wake up in the next decade,

perhaps until then Saint George will have returned from the underworld

and swung his sword toward the dragon’s scaly neck,

in his helmet he might bring the earliest primroses

and the breeze from off your buds

in a dream, playful dragonflies buzz through your eyes,

and when you raise the curtain they might fly out

into our little green room,

perhaps then the wings will return

from those first, soft days

 

***

at the end of the path

there is a nest, a den, a grove,

a place, warm and tight,

that covers you, hides you, shelters you

when the fists of fathers and grandfathers go berserk

and when the heavens lose their temper

unjustly

and that place needs to be rebuilt

always anew, from picked flowers,

fallen leaves and twigs, tufts of blown wool

and a fistful of warm earth

you are afraid, I know, afraid

of the words family, dwelling, domicile,

kinship, lineage, relatives, childbirth,

all those primary cells of society,

uneasy because they’re unhappy

wounded does are shot out of compassion,

fawns become orphans, and their home is now like jagged lightning,

like gasps of fish out of water, a bottomless wound,

an astonished o, an unvoiced collapse

blood is neither milk nor dew,

it is a log bridge washed away by the swollen river

during sleepless nights we rebuke our ancestors,

they are to be blamed for our imperfect shape,

it is easy to forgive, it is hard to forget,

words are bruises and cuts

taking a turn is sometimes justified so as to avoid further accidents,

crossroads are always dangerous, choices are always the wrong ones

build that den in the ravine, survive the winter

 

***

the storks are leaving us, descending into amber twilights

I kiss the top of your left shoulder,

I play with the coffee beans in your earlobes

like nesting in a belly of dewy grasses,

soft and secure – that’s how it feels to enter your embrace

you recite to me

friendships are sacred, loves are fleeting,

but in the eyes of the storks everything is fleeting and sacred at once

 

***

plum jam spills over the skies and my hands,

everything is burnt and sweet, wasps and ants are already coming,

the poems are all written, the gardens are all hoed,

a shard of the forest has pierced my chest, I’ve been whispering

to gentle hares let me be saved, let me be

a child, let me be a child of wax,

let me make the deserted birch groves warm again

 


IMPRESSUM

 

Sandorf - publishing house founded in 2008, engaged in Croatian literature and literature in translation, and in a wide range of books in humanities.

 

Center for Research and Promotion of Urban Culture (CIP) is a non-profit association that has existed for twenty years. Established in 1998, it operates in the areas of culture and art, urbanism, youth mobility and social dialogue.

 

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Managing editor: Jana Smrekar

Editorial board: Matko Abramić, Thanos Gogos, Sena Zereyak
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Website maintenance: Nabukodonozor d.o.o.

 

 




 

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