RIP: Branko Kolarić (20.08.1948. – 09.04.2026.)

The Prodigal Son is kneeling in the husks.
He remembers the man about to die
who cried, “Don’t let me die, Doctor!”
The swine go on feeding in the sunlight.
When he folds his hands, his knees on corncobs,
he sees the smoke of ships
floating off the isles of Tyre and Sidon,
and father beyond father beyond father.

An old man once, being dragged across the floor
by his shouting son, cried:
“Don’t drag me any farther than that crack on the floor—
I only dragged my father that far!”

My father is seventy five years old.
How difficult it is,
bending the head, looking into the water.
Under the water there’s a door the pigs have gone through.

Robert Bly (1926)

link: Bly, Robert – Porkopolis