Ivan Dobnik - Vilenica

40 · Mircea Cărtărescu
The Occident
The West put my tail between my legs.
I’ve seen New York and Paris, San Francisco and Frankfurt
I’ve been where I never dreamed I’d go.
I came home with a stack of photos
and death in my soul.
I’d supposed I meant something, my life meant something.
I’d glimpsed God’s eye observing me through the microscope
as I wriggled on the slide.
now I believe in nothing.
I was good enough for a mindless stability
for a bottomless oblivion
for a lonely vagina.
I used to stroll through places that no longer exist now.
oh, my world no longer exists!
my world no longer exists!
my sordid world where I meant something.
I, mircea cărtărescu, am nobody in this new world
there are 10 38 mircea cărtărescus here
and people 10 38 times better
there are books better than everything I’ve ever written
and women who couldn’t care less about them.
the pragmatic egg cracks open and God is present
in his very creation, a pretty-boy God dressed to kill
in magnificent cities and gorgeous autumns
and a sort of sweet southern-Virginia nostalgia in Dorin’s
car (country music from the speakers) …
I know my place now
and I know literature’s place
for I’ve seen the Sears Tower
and I’ve seen Chicago in a greenish fog from the top
while a pair of greyhounds kept running around the terrace of a skyscraper
I told Gabriela as we sat there drinking our Cokes
that my life was at an end.
it’s as with Eliot’s Magi: I’ve seen the Occident
I flew over Manhattan
and stared wide-eyed at my spell-struck death.
for this is my death.
I stared at display windows with Suzuki motorcycles
and saw myself reflected, dirty, anonymous.
I walked along Königstrasse for hours and hours
among the kids on skateboards.