Kindness Separates Night from Day

“There is no passing from one world to another / There is no other world,” says the speaker of “Prettier Lullabies” in Marija Dejanović’s third collection, Kindness Separates Night from Day, translated from Croatian by Vesna Maric. This line has particular resonance for a book written by a poet born into war in 1992 Prijedor, Bosnia and Herzegovina, one whose poems wrangle with precarity. “Aubergine” recalls a mother reminding the speaker that she “was born in the times of ethnic cleansing / but there had been nothing clean” about arriving into the world “while the splayed flesh of my mother was surrounded by / dying soldiers and civilians […].”

Themes of isolation and transience simmer throughout, as Dejanović effectively captures the sense of otherness, of living “[in] a country where few speak your language,” where “everyone is more visible, more protected” and “[t]he movements of your knees reflect your lack of friends // Your gait is stiff, too strict.” The barriers of isolation work both ways:

If they speak to you in that language
you shrug under your hat

They could say they love you or curse you
and you wouldn’t know the difference

this ignorance is your small personal victory

Straightforward recollections at times give way to strained figurative turns, as in “My Friend”:

Your eyes: symbols for swollen, heavy breasts
sagging from your father’s gaze
horse milk and gifts
which are missing from your skin

Highlights are when the everyday is made slant, as in “Fish,” which begins with a male speaker explaining to the speaker how to catch a fish, and concludes with existential reflections:

Fish must be cooked quickly
otherwise it’ll forget that it is fish

While the fish is cooking
keep your gaze in the tray
and keep telling the tray you are fish

you are fish
you are fish