SANJA /in Croatian San-girl

SANJA
You were not born merely on the third of August, nineteen eighty-nine,
While the radio pleasantly played pop music
And the woman beside me called out for her mother—for studies
had shown that the
Most common words during childbirth are "Oh, Mother mine!"—
You were born long ago, woven in secrecy, at the break of dawn,
Back when I dreamed innocently by the roadside on the steep banks of the Bosut River.
You did not come to be by chance on the twelfth floor of a big-city skyscraper,
Amid the steady whirring of an unreliable, dilapidated elevator,
Nor amidst the schizoid, constant cycle of construction and demolition
On the thirteenth floor—built without a legal permit;
You came to be according to a plan inscribed in invisible books
Back when I swayed alone in a hammock among the apple trees, gazing at the cumulus clouds.
You were not invented like an artifact at the close of the twentieth century,
Placed in the Millennium Dome like a priceless vase,
You were not created in the salons of Christian Dior in Paris,
Nor were you described in the works of Saul Bellow or J.K. Rowling;
You were brought forth somewhere in Orion while meteors sparkled
And I daydreamed of the Little Mermaid upon the sea foam.
She wept melodiously and tenderly—what ineffable, varied emotions those were!
And then I thought: An undying love has been born.
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