A Portrait of My Father
 

My father draws a blade along the wired frame as we watch
perfect rectangles of honey comb topple into a stainless steel

bowl. From a hard earned 78 centimetre TV screen a voice
fires news of aggressor Serbs like bullets into our lounge room

shooting father in the heart. Blood thick as honey runs along
the fragile frame of him. On the TV antenna outside crows

congregate planning their attack on the raw liver and heart he'd
set out as bait. Father waits by the shed air rifle aimed and fires

a bullet of revenge. Long ago in his motherland he laid down
beneath a poplar tree where a snake supped nectar from his

angel trumpet ear, the translucent vessel of his wisdom
he foresaw the scenes that flash before him on the screen.

So we packed our grief and headed for the land of his dreams
the step-motherland who'd gag our deepest cries with lumps

of creamed honey. I watched my father's tongue sink to the
clay riverbed of his mouth like a stone. My ageing father

nursing his swollen knees collapsed under two decades of
laying tiles when he'd return in ecstasy throwing dollars

in the air like pollen. My father rescuing drowning bees and
ducklings from his pool, stuck in the prickly middle between

mother and I, calling truce between the warring sides
bringing in honey unaware of the sticky trail he leaves behind.
 

*The ancient Balkans believed the eye to be the seat of passion and emotion, while
the ear was the location of reason or even life itself. A snake licking the ear became
a symbol prophetic knowledge.
 
 

Lidija Cvetkovic

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