‘Fear that spread like laughing gas:’ 2 poems by Slovenian poet Muanis Sinanović

Muanis Sinanović is a Slovenian poet and essayist born in 1989. He has published four collections of poetry and a collection of narrative essays, and is the recipient of two national awards.

What Did I See?

Sunny days, flicker of leaves on the ceiling,

flutter of fresh washing, sweat wrung from muscle

like juice pressed from grapes.

Hours when light hovered above us like a

thin billowing bed sheet.

Clocks, whose dark corners stretched across

whole settlements, great big grasshoppers

hopping out of them with masks on their human faces.

Fear that spread like laughing gas,

the racket it caused for some reason,

and plagues that arose for all the wrong reasons,

like man sprung from a drop of seed.

Full of faith, I cast anchor into the sky,

and I felt when it caught.

Piedmont

Every night our doubles shin up the mountain. Wanting to see the ritual. Listening to the bells of restless sheep on the clearings. We sit at home or in bars. Every night our doubles shin up the mountain, without us knowing. Furtively they watch green fireflies. Walk past cottages with lit windows. Not knowing whether or not they’re hospitable. It’s still and silent beyond the crag. Sometimes, as we talk at night, we think somebody is in our rooms. Every night the doubles from the mountain shout there is no ritual. Their voices are lost in the wind.