bora

​

Unlike other weather phenomena, which arrive almost

indifferently,

even when they cause great damage, the wind —

says Joseph Conrad — is like a

personal enemy. It storms

toward you, strips your trees bare

or forces them into strange

poses. Elsewhere it allows nothing but

grass and scrub or your bare skin,

the torn heel of an old dehydrated woman or the tormented

back of a martyr who at

dawn licks his wounds.

And like a poem, yet seemingly without

rhythm, sometimes appearing in long, then

in short stanzas,

sometimes powerfully pouring many words

over you and then again

losing only a few verses, gently almost,

tenderly, as a gradation, as a stepwise

ascending sequence, only to subdue you with a

violent flood of words in the

very next moment.

The bora is a peculiar wind,

breaking in like divine order, masculine

and feminine at once, the bora is the

wind that orchestrates

and choreographs this region.

The bora flickers, strokes and caresses,

sends invisible hands into the foliage

yet in the distance thunder and roll

the crescendos inexorably closer,

and come and come and come,

wherever you may be,

it finds you,

unleashes itself, breaks and tears,

pushes and drags and rips

and devours.

It is a one-sided act of love,

of a friend however, because

over the years you learn that

the atmosphere is cleared through it,

the sky becomes clean and clear, the air

fresh and pure, and you want to

call out to Conrad that you can now

breathe more freely and that

the sun does its part too and

that with this wind

something in you

has stopped

fighting

and is

still.

​

​

​

karst spring

​

a moment of surprise, unreal,
because not expected, a spontaneous healing
of what was thought dead, like a sudden change of weather
on a wedding day, despite all announcements,
a single bird’s voice
in a frozen forest, endemics like Neptune grass and donkey thistle,
a first glance from above into the
unimagined depth of that gorge

or

the draft of air on the skin from the wingbeat
of the owl, the sudden eye contact with a lynx, and yet
nothing as astonishing
as mountains that give birth to rivers,
as if there were another space
from which

at every moment
truths

seep into ours

​

​

the art of absence

​

human presence in the
karst is a problem, because
with every hydroelectric plant
in the underground grottoes
the water level changes and
each year a few
animal species go extinct, which
means: it produces
absence

​

one would have to be in conversation
with the landscape,
or even better:
practice the art of absence
be so still
that one can overhear the landscape
in conversation with itself

​

to be absently present

​

​

​

Calcium Carbonicum

​

One would have to offer the plateau
a little of the protection of
oyster shells.
To soothe corrosive and gnawing processes. One
would have to care for the rough, barren
surfaces with oils and ointments,
to give support to the porous
through cave openings.

Deep inside one would have to
reach in, correct the separation. One would have to
help the springs bubbling within
come into the light, make them visible,
with ghigher potencies heal all those
deaths that hang in the shafts, lift
the heaviness from the valleys, and give
much courage—that's what one would have to do.

One would have to send people who
hold dolines, prevent collapses,
find solutions for soluble substances and
wander with the flocks.
That would be necessary.

​

Or would one have to give people
calcium carbonicum?
To the karst itself, to the people, to eliminate
corrosive and gnawing processes.
Prescribe them long walks in the Velebit,
carefully salve discontent from their bodies,
shine light onto porous skin,
and bathe hands and feet in streams,
in small potencies breathe comfort into the shafts,
correct separation, do nothing but
count dry-stone walls, linger in the
mrgari,
where stacked walls
unfold into vastness, sit
by caves and find solutions,
climb peaks with animals
and lie again and again on warm
rocks.
That would be necessary.