Do Astronauts Need Art 3, Courtesy the artist Zoran Simunovic

It’s World Poetry Day,
the day when it’s perhaps better
not to encounter any poets.
I went out into the park with my labrador, Luna.
A yellow butterfly –
as if to mark the first day of spring –
draws its freedom trajectory between the earth and the sky.
For a second it seems like we’re all made of sun.
Still, it remains invisible how the poetry of the world comes alive,
just like that butterfly’s drawing up in the air,
you can hardly be certain it’s been here at all.
It’s already gone.

 

Translated from the Croatian by

Tomica Bajsić
TOMICA BAJSIĆ is a poet, publicist, translator and editor, born in Zagreb. He has published several collections of poetry and won prestigious national awards. He is the president of the Croatian PEN Centre and the editor of his own publishing house Druga Priča.

Damir Šodan
DAMIR ŠODAN is a poet, playwright and translator, born in Split. He has published seven collections of poetry, three books of selected plays as well an anthology of Croatian neorealist poetry and the anthology of contemporary European poetry, Are There Any Poets in Monte Carlo (Croatian PEN, 2022).

Zoran šimunović
Zoran šimunović lives and works as a freelance artist in the city Osijek, Croatia. He won the rector’s award for the best student in the academic year 2010/2011. In 2012, he won the first prize of the Sony awards for short movies with the cinematic work titled “book” in Sarajevo. Represented in over 25 solo exhibitions and more than 35 group exhibitions in museums and galleries.