detail from: KRK Art dizajn

TAPESTRY OF THE UNIVERSE AND SIGHS

(Dedicated to the olive tree in Bar, 2,250 years old)

“Trees are the earth’s endless effort to speak to the sky.”

— Tagore

By Razumenka Marković
Translated by Milena Blagojević

In the beginning, let us be clear.

I am no graceful Venus rising from the sea foam, nor a tender reverie. I am a woman, wild, robust, fierce, my roots clenched deep within barren stone, my body shaped like a sigh, my gnarled branches reaching toward the stars.

My memory reaches back to a slender shoot, and to the hands of Queen Teuta who planted me, in remembrance of the eyes of a pirate who brought it to her as plunder and never returned from his voyage. I remember her rushing to the ramparts, searching among the sailors for those eyes that slowly hollowed her into an empty shell. As the sea murmurs within a conch, so did the silent music of glances echo within her. Unable to bear her secret, she cast herself from the cliffs, seeking the only possible fulfilment of love. That day, the sighs of the olive groves rose to the heavens.

I remember the radiant night when light filled the world, the night of reconciliation between God and creation, when the promise of the Saviour restored the lost Paradise.

I remember a thousand years of Byzantine splendour, and the great trembling of the world, the fall of Constantinople, and the indifference of the West as Hagia Sophia stood in mortal danger. All eyes, mine and those of every living being aware of the coming storm, were fixed upon the sea, waiting for sails that never came.

No one will ever know the true measure of that hour. In history, as in life, no regret restores what is lost, nor do centuries repay a single moment.

In the fury of victorious hordes, priceless relics and books were cast into flames, and immeasurable treasures vanished. I remember the last breaths of freedom fading into silence, while empires passed through my memory, Byzantine, Serbian, Venetian, Ottoman.

Artists are not artists at every hour. What endures is born in moments of inspiration. So it is with history.

Only God knows how many ships crossed the Atlantic in search of promise, and only the ocean knows how many found darkness instead. When Columbus reached the New World, I was already 1717 years old. Every tension must gather; every event must ripen. I remember the Congress of Berlin, the recognition of beauty that captured Goethe’s gaze, and the moment our ships were no longer strangers in their own harbour.

I remember King Nikola and his daughter Jelena, radiant among his nine jewels, as she became Queen of Savoy. Through alliances and journeys, the dignity of Montenegro rose, and I remember those moments like constellations.

A nation needs millions of births for a genius to emerge. Yet in a short span, two were born, Tesla and Milanković, both guided by light and the divine within all living things. One illuminated the world; the other followed the rhythms of the heavens. And he was not alone.
He wrote to me, thirty-seven letters, for I keep company with the stars. When hooves trampled me, I lifted my gaze upward. When blades tore my bark, the Pleiades healed me.
Every seed carries the drama of survival. Not all take root, some are lost, some crushed, some consumed, but some rise, bearing within them the codes of art, science, and memory.

I travelled through time with Milanković, through Babylon, Athens, among great minds and distant stars. I remember Schrödinger, and the love that gave rise to a theory of sighs.
I have witnessed landscapes shaped by God and confirmed by science.

In the end, let us be clear.

I am no Venus, but an aged woman, bound to stone, connected to the universe by every leaf, written in sighs of sorrow and relief.

What is time?

Time is a river without shores.

A tapestry of the universe and sighs.

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