Pure call of the wilderness
by Vinko Kalinic
Sometime I have a feeling that I’ve lost myself long time ago
on this world and that everything is being wrongly set:
towns names, the streets names and the people names,
signs on the roads, birth certificates and the flags colours.
That we learned wrong subjects from the textbooks,
and that professors had to be the students
and learn from us who were the children,
and that we should have stayed state in
disinterested for the sides of the world,
for statistical data on economic growth
and when was what battle fought.
It seems to me that we would have been smarter
with that smile of the boy who
relentlessly grins in front of a world map
placing Africa where should be
America, and Europe where Asia is.
And also, if the wagging school was wiser,
than boring formulas of Physics and Chemistry.
Whereas – it’s like that sometimes in my head –
it seems to me when people wouldn’t know
anything about chemical compounds and the laws of physics,
they would still be living in the cave
and they would still be playing mums and dads.
And that without the TV news, Internet and daily newspapers
they would better get to know each other. And how tears drop,
and how laughter thunder. And also how the heart sometimes squirm
past all laws, in front of things people
most often don’t think, things that
never existed in the textbooks.
Sometimes I really feel that I’ve lost myself.
And what is left, it seems to me that should be right,
and what is right, that it should be left,
and what is up, that should be down,
and vice versa. And so, I would mix up all of that.
Because it seems to me sometimes, that people
love and hate each other by inertia and habit.
And that they do everything just because someone told them
it was good to do just that
as they taught them to do,
but actually is not, because it could be otherwise.
And everything methinks so, and vice,
and sometimes predicts, and really it is exactly
as in that prophecy, and not the way they told us.
Strange thoughts seize upon me. As I got older even more.
And sometimes I’d be really sorry that I have never lived in a cave,
without refrigerator, microwave and remote control.
Imagine that every morning you have to strike the stones together
to light a fire, chase the wild boar or catch a fish?
What thoughts would you then be having in your head, and whether your hands
would have the same sense for things?
Well, OK! – I admit, it would be hard. Thus it is much easier.
But what about the sense of things? Is our hunger the same
as it was the hunger before? And that fire, is it the same as this microwave one?
Does the domestic pig grunt the same as the wild one? Or we all have got lost
among all these countries, languages, cultures, technical
and mental aid tools? And whether that was wild just because
we were spoiled, and we are wild, we who didn’t have enough
just fish for lunch, so we built a ship and factory, and so…
we just drew Europe, America, Asia…
– If I could get into your head, I think I would have felt like Alice
in Wonderland! – my sister once said to me.
And she wasn’t too far from the truth!
On this planet of wonders, if you were not here,
My love, I do not know where I would go.
Nor what would I do, anyway?
I think about it when I look at your face.
Face nobody told me anything about,
and on which is written absolutely everything
that is important.
Pure call of the wilderness.
