Visions of Sound, Courtesy the artist Borna Bursac

you saw the most beautiful girl
with olive skin
and round breasts
(just like Ornella Muti’s)
wearing a T-shirt
by Dolce & Gabbana,
poised like St. Theresa of Avila
contemplating that spear
about to pierce her chest.

She must have been put off
by the Wittgenstein’s biography
in your hands, for she suddenly
sprung up and exited
in Estoril,
as you continued to Cascais
with the sad realisation
that you’d just missed
the woman of your life
(or somebody else’s):

an Atlantean as beautiful
as the body of her slippery language,
juicy and rustling
like the samba
you heard that summer
on the lake of Bohinj
when you were eighteen.

So, what choice did you have,
but to continue reading that damn book
with the bitter knowledge
that the limits of your language
are the limits of your world,
that is the case,
much like not
wanting to be silent,
not even in death.

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).

James Meetze
James Meetze is the author of five books of poetry, including Phantom Hour and Dayglo, winner of the Sawtooth Poetry Prize, as well as Neki Novi Hramovi (Some New Temples), translated into Croatian by Ivana Bošnjak (Editions Bošković: 2020) and Kasno u Dugome Sada (Late in the Long Now), translated into Serbian by Uroš Ristanović (No Rules, 2020). He is editor, with Simon Pettet, of Other Flowers: Uncollected Poems by James Schuyler (FSG, 2010). His poetry has been translated into Spanish, Turkish, Finnish, Serbian, and Croatian. He divides his time between Split, Croatia and San Diego, California, where he teaches writing and film studies at University of Arizona Global Campus and in the Depth Psychology and Creativity program at Pacifica Graduate Institute.

Borna Bursac
Borna Bursac is a Croatian photographer based in Zagreb, who spent his early childhood in Lagos, Nigeria. His work spans surrealistic double exposures, black and white compositions, street photography, and long-exposure night images. His photographs have been exhibited in cities around the world including Rome, Zagreb, Belgrade, Athens, Chania, Zadar, and Varaždin.