Drvena pesma [English translation]

Last night I dreamt of those things that I still mourn

My wooden rocking pony,

Reins, small wheels in symphony,

Palm Sunday bells…

At my heels my Sancho toils,

On expedition to turmoil.

I also had a dream of my first tambura,

As a lady of the night,

In the Amsterdam’s red-light,

From a display, my innocence seducing,

To the mortal sins inducing...

Where’d my tambura’s wood grow and who did carve it out?

Had underneath this tree’s crown anyone ever kissed?

How come that from its insides all of my songs could sprout?

Had the luthier foretold it, all that would come to exist?

Wherever did this tree grow, atop which mountain sides?

Did ever same rain showers pour on us in our prime?

Whoever groomed its branches, blessed his mother’s eyes,

Whose hand was burning its leaves during the autumn time? I ask...

Later I dreamt of a bed, all in sheets of lace…

A fierce dance of fire flames…

Old shuttered window panes....

A headboard… A rose intarsia thereof…

Underneath which we made love...

I dreamt of a coffin, ebony, silver bound....

November… Foggy haze....

Quartet of dearest faces…

A little boat waits by a rainy jetty,

To take me to eternity.

Where did this ebony grow, which winds it put up with?

Had underneath this tree’s crown anyone ever cried?

Why didn’t lightning strike it, blessed St. Peter’s beard?

Who rubbed his hands together, before he felled it to its side?

My one and only darling… Why did you wake me up?

I was so very close to the innards of time…

Inside my heart the wood is secretly building up…

Out of its seeds wherever will the seedlings climb…

... I ask?