Melancholy you crinkle in your hand

Is the sole mistress of midnight

And before morning all the shadows are in exile

Lilac no longer holds its original meaning

The whole room can remind one

Of some mute convoy of emptiness

Having conquered, silence prepares its manoeuvre

And you cannot hear the waves

Nor steel the foam

From which Aphrodite arose

All you can sense

Is how a colonel of some lethargic army

Deprives you of your senses, one by one

Slowly, very slowly.

FOREST

Each time I retire

At the second hour after midnight

I fear of waking up the sirens

In the frothy seas of your bloodstream

They keep its warm waves

In a ritual

Come morning their voices inspire

The exile of moss

And the forest that

Offered us silence in so servile a manner

When you come out of the forest

Never turn off the slumbering

Radio station of the sirens

By awakened sounds of the suburbs

You warned me

When you come out of the forest

Sirens set within us, untouchable

And invisible entryways

And you also emphasised:

The forest is an entire settlement

And never believe anybody

That until morning the forest

Is nothing but an ordinary token of silence.

Lana Derkac was born on June 22, 1969, in Požega, Croatia. She graduated from the University of Zagreb, Faculty of Philosophy. She writes poetry, prose and drama. Her work was published in a large number of Croatian and international literary magazines and newspapers.

So far she has published four collections of poetry: Wayside Crucifixes (Vinkovci, 1995), Lightbearer’s Refuge (Zagreb, 1996), Eve from Mailbox (Zagreb, 1997) and The Chest for Shadows (Karlovac, 1999). For her last collection she was awarded Zdravko Pucak Poetry Prize as well as the Duhovno hrasce Prize. Lana Derkac also published a book of plays, Resignation (Zagreb, 2000) and a collection of short stories, Hearkening to Angels (Zagreb, 2003). With Rade Jarak and Tomislav Ribic she published a collection of poetry: I Feel Melancholy. She participated in various literary events, at home and abroad, including the famous Struga Poetry Evenings in Macedonia. She initiated also the Dobrisa Cesaric Days. Her poems are featured in Poetical Babylon (project by UNESCO in Rome) and in Rain of Poems above Dubrovnik (a join project between Chile and Croatia). Her work is translated into English, Hungarian, Czech, Macedonian, German and Spanish. Lana Derkac is actually president of Slavonia-Baranja-Srijem Branch of the Croatian Writers’ Association.