Day 23 & Thursday Doors, 23/4/20: Doors/Vrata

• Manja Maksimovič

Today I wish to share my space with my mother who also wrote a poem for children about letters. And my poem? Well, it’s Thursday again and this can mean only one thing.

.

D

o

o

o

o

o

r

s

.

Prompt 23: “Write a poem about a particular letter of the alphabet, or perhaps, the letters that form a short word. Doesn’t ‘S’ look sneaky and snakelike? And ‘W’ clearly doesn’t know where it’s going!”

What fun! And even better is the example, that’s why I repeat it here, if I may. The poem was written by Eduardo Galeano and translated by the organiser of NaPoWriMo and provider of all the prompts, who in my opinion doesn’t get nearly enough credit for all her work. She is Maureen Thorson and she has been sent from the future to tell it like it is, as her website confides.

The A has its legs open.
The M is a seesaw that comes and goes between heaven and hell.
The O is a closed circle, it will choke you.
The R is scandalously pregnant.

All of the letters of the word AMOR are dangerous.

My poem has two parts, both with an acrostic and a gallery, about the Italian and the Slovenian door situation. Italian first.

Double brass, double digit, dabba doo.
Our mind sees it as a knocker.
Our mind sees it as a double knocker.
Ready to open or close at length, at will, at your service.

  • D – Massa Marittima
  • O – Rome
  • O – Rome
  • R – Rome

And now over to Slovenia. Mind the Slovenian word for the door, VRATA.

Visit now a completely different style:
Rear or front or service, with one foot out.
Across the middle a bar as if the door had a belt.
There is a vertical line separating two halves sometimes.
Add another bar in the middle. And all tops seem to be narrower.

  • V – Ljubljana
  • R – Piran
  • A – Črna vas, Plečnik’s church
  • T – Ljubljana
  • A – Ljubljana

And finally, here is my mother’s poem for children from her book in Slovenian, Darilo (The Present), in my (liberal) translation:

WHAT LETTERS CAN DO
by Meta Maksimovič

A STANDS APART AND TRAVELS FAR.
E WHEELS HER FEET OVER THE STREET.
I HIGHLY LIFTS HIS TINY FIST.
O HOLLOW HOLE SLOWLY ROLLS.
U RUDELY LAUGHS BUT BUYS YOU STUFF.

JUST R CAN DO NOTHING MORE
THAN MURMUR, PURR AND SNORE.

For Day 23 of NaPoWriMo 2020

and

for Norm Frampton’s Thursday Doors challenge

41 thoughts on “Day 23 & Thursday Doors, 23/4/20: Doors/Vrata”

  2. So many gorgeous doors–I want to open them all. The columns at Plečnik’s church are amazing! As for the poems, I love the alliteration in the DOOR poem and the image of a door with the belt in VRATA (it gives the door an immediate personality). Also, your mom is a poet! How cool.😍💜

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    1. Thank you so much, Shuku! 🙂 Yes, she is a poet and a rapper and loves to write poems for the people she loves. But my father also wrote poems when younger. Maybe he still does it but doesn’t tell anybody. 😀

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  13. Lovely stuff. So the artistic instinct runs in the family then. My favorite door is the very last one: so many detailed elements and the wrought iron just adds to it’s intricate beauty.
    So sorry for the late visit. Yesterday was a crazy day spent in the city…scary these days 😉

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  16. Lovely on both counts, pictures and words — very fond of the featured photo, the melange of materials, the striking contrast of hard surfaces and soft edges. Lovely.

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  17. Pingback: Day 23 & PPAC: Hanging tree – An Embarrassment of Riches

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