Scene: coffee bar Pobednik, Kalemegdan
While I am crossing the bridge, the rivers are flowing a completely different town. I, a vertical river, am traversing the rivers by steps. River in me, a town in the rivers, a socialist skyscraper springs from the curly greenery.
At the very end of the bridge I walk in place. Because I do not want bridges to end. Bridges whose backs are rippling, arches that follow rivers indefinitely.
But this bridge is short and full of holes that twist my foot archs as cars clog the estuary below me. "Ušće", a place where lips are joined. A big mouth opens so that the rivers alternatively leap into them. Fish-like sculptures observe their leaps with thick lips. I remember plumped lips that I see on Belgrade streets. Below me water lips cross each other, in the city plumped lips sit in a grey Porsche.
Inbetween are “chardas”, river inns, far away from the sky and from the earth. The porches of these inns serve fish-like sculptures with plumped lips, their eyes are round, their mouths are arches of the bridges tending back to the river. To count down the time with a coarse-grained hourglass. And that look, a dull look in the sky. Eyes upwards. Mouth downwards. Neither in heaven nor on earth. Only in the river, only in the rivers. The exhalation of the civilization, cosmetic surgery of new fish-like Madonnas whose faces can fall apart with the slightest movement, dissolve in the water together with old car bodies, dilapidated facades, Turkish bones and all the excrement of this city.
Standing by the bridge railing, I extend my arms towards the river. I remember two writers. One warmed his fingers with his breath, and his breath floated over the river. The other’s fingertips were swollen from playing the guitar. The strings were cut into his flesh to create tones, he had to put compresses on his fingers. Music shakes us and crucifies our fingers, and our soul is liberated, is it liberated, how far is it liberated? I drown thin candles in the river sand, let them burn for as long as possible, let a fire break out when their verticals disappear. A fire above the earth.
Neva Lukić