At the onset of that other one,
When the shiny supernova fell apart,
The native soil rose above the pier.
The third millennium was waking up
In the distance of Galileo’s telescope,
And a dark cloud on the sky above New York
Landed on the native soil
With a chaos from nothingness.
Today people are also odd,
Some new future is being born.
In the test tubes with the seeds of conception
Cloners do god’s magic.
Civilization again sinks
Into a wistful music of Noah’s ark.
BOSNIANS
I must have walked these woods a hundred times
Before I found you, my son,
Father’s loop-eared sparrow!
Don’t you remember how your ears were like wings
Before you became a man?
How hard this soil!
And … different …
I’m tired, son!
Uphill, downhill – a hundred times …
And I thought you were with those below,
You know, over by that creek …
I crossed the entire valley,
I recognized them all,
But … no sign of you …
I know that you were together,
Always …
So … why here?
Overhead the rotting beech trees
As if made of clay by children.
At your feet the eternal rock.
Its roots go deep.
Do you remember saying how the beech trees
Were like scarecrows in the night,
And how the green moss on the rocks
Reminded you of foreign lands?
Sweet thing, how could they?
I could not find your hand …
Perhaps those below have it?
And why, misfortune, the right one?
The one that pulled my nose
And pinched my cheeks …
And the eye!
Your piercing dark eye!
It too is gone …
As if it had wandered off somewhere
Following the golden locks of some young girl.
Remember how your mother kissed your eyes
And how your sister teased you
For always milling about?
I searched for the two of them as well along the road,
But, nothing …
Some newcomers mentioned
That they had left for America …
You hear?!
Oh, my God! All the way to America!
And I …
I am here, stroking your head …
So unkempt, son, so unlike you!
I spent time in the camp,
On Manjaca …
Some people moved into our house
And repainted everything.
Threw our houseleek from the roof!
You remember? The red one,
Whose oil we used to drop in your ear.
I don’t think our dogs are still alive …
They would have noticed me …
Oh, dear mother! Oh, my God!
What’s happened to us?
Who have we offended to deserve this?
Forgive me for weeping like an old woman.
You know I always frowned on that …
I was thinking … that when I found you
Together we would follow them
To America …
And build ourselves an identical house …
Makes no difference – Bosnia, or America!
But, I won’t! …
Who knows if we’d find them …
America isn’t over some creek,
Or the size of some village …
I will build it here,
Under this beech tree!
For the both of us …
So when they return …
Oh, my son …
We cannot even speak as before …
Something has me by the throat,
I don’t know what, my son,
Father’s loop-eared little sparrow! … .
IF ONLY …
How easily could I forgive you
That blood, the fires, the banishments,
If you had arrived from somewhere else,
Looked somehow different,
Had a different sensibility.
More easily could I forgive you
The grief you have caused us,
If you had crossed the seas,
From some other world,
In strange clothing,
Speaking foreign words …
Perhaps I could understand
If we stood in the way
Of some unstoppable raving force
That grinds everything in its path,
Having come from the Urals,
Or the cold Russian steppes.
Less would I curse you
When I feel the scent of home
If you had come from the past,
With turbans on your heads,
Riding atop Anatolian horses …
How horrified would I be
If you were of noble birth
And sullied your historical honor
With our blood!
Even if you were SS troops,
Or Black Shirts,
More easily could I forgive you
For the sake of future generations!
But you did not have to arrive on your satanic march.
You were here all the time,
Drinking from the same fountains,
From under the festive roses
Making toasts to friendship and brotherhood!
If only you had come from somewhere,
From afar,
Having sailed across seven seas! …
DO YOU HEAR, OLD MAN?!
From the bed and into the dark of the cold night,
Encircled by fear,
Helpless,
A woman’s whisper awakes:
Do you hear, old man? Someone’s pup is howling …
All around, only frozen darkness
And the pup like a painful thought …
The woman turns, pushing him, yet he is motionless, no warmth.
A terrible thought turns in her head,
But she refuses, fleeing the thought.
See how quiet he’s become …
As if hiding in the field of tall corn,
Quietly peeking through the hairy cornsilk
Toward the field of uncut grass
Where the two-legged raven-haired filly stood
Winking and taunting him …
She pokes him in the ribs, her fingers full of hope.
… That filly, old man …
Do you hear?
The pup’s voice has grown feeble,
As if he’s hungry,
Howling from hunger …
She nestles her body along his,
Only to be met by a cold numbness,
Like a big, a long icicle on their shingle house.
Why so stiff? You harnessed your pulses
As if caught in a tryst under the old apple tree.
So, your veins gone rigid, and your pulses turned silent …
And all your fear, numb like your bones, old man …
So, do you hear? Listen!
The pup’s muzzle has gone rigid from the cold.
More of a wheeze now than a how
l …
Fear has gone to its mouth, and cold and hunger,
And these shells,
Falling all night upon the town.
I too was woken by a shell
And from my chest a hot stream gushed forth
But your sweet sleep would not let you wake …
She leans her head upon his chest,
Only to be met by a mute chasm …
And your heart has grown faint, my old man!
As if dreaming of our Jasmine,
As she is crawling out of that shell crater,
Where we buried her under blankets
To hide her from the cold and the starving dogs.
She screams and digs her fingers into his ribs.
Wake up! Don’t frighten me!
That was no pup!
That was no bitch having pups in her death!
That was our Jasmine!
That was her trying to crawl out of the shell crater
Whimpering as if she came from the womb of a dying bitch
Hiding her from death in that there crater …
She restlessly reaches around the stiff body,
Her fingers tear at the moist shirt.
Oh, dear God! Oh, old man!
This is not from my …
This is from your chest!
The shell has opened this creek on your chest,
And it has overflown on to me …
She rolls up to the dead corpse, whispering:
Wake me from this dream, dear God!
You cannot take him away from me too …
Like some basket of cherries …
Wake up, old man!
You cannot leave our Jasmine in that crater!
From behind the frosted window,
Someone’s howling calls out again,
As if the bitch were having pups in her death.
SARAJEVO
In you, two worlds met,
Intertwined,
Like two white pearls in a purple shell:
Rosy-faced,
The trembling of the bodies from the sun’s birthplace,
And golden sheaves of obstinate spirits
From the place where rum-colored light descends.
… And all the riches of the Eternal Trinity,
which noisily sail by on the haloes of the past.
Sleepy fountains by the skirts of the minarets,
Chiming sounds of the church bells,
And some strange tremor, Bosnian,
Obstinate and noble!
Virtuosos and craftsmen
Spent centuries building you,
Love songs in stone,
Outdoing one another in beauty,
Naming you after the royal palace.
You took in from all sides,
From all corners of the world,
The curious, the adventurous,
Offering a part of yourself,
Giving life to memories …
v
At your peak
In the ecstasy of scattered centuries
Under the planet’s fireworks,
The nations of the world gathered on your bosom
To take part in the modern dance of the Aegean south.
v
Under the linden’s intoxicating scent
I dreamt of some lunatics,
Whom you sheltered in your bosom:
They rummage through your soul
And burn your hands;
The lightning bolt of human greed,
From the blind pupils of hate,
Destroys your centuries-old creations.
v
Somewhere from the wilderness,
From some dark corner of the mind,
They stoke fires upon your face.
Vultures circle overhead!
These rabid eagles of death spread their frozen wings,
And the sun goes dark,
And the river dries up,
And some strange tremor spreads out from your streets.
At noon, they hide the sun behind your majestic mountains,
They banish the moonlight across the Seven Seas,
Their clouds bring with them great sorrow,
Unbearable pain …
Striking with hate upon you
To cripple your beauty,
To return your jewels to the dark depths.
Fiery tongues rummage
Through the intestines of antique structures,
Bascharshya burns!
Some inhuman scourge has risen from the Dark Ages
To wage its Satanic battle!
But you, metropolis, are stronger than hate
And, despite all of your suffering,
In your eyes I already see
Twinkling tears of hope.
A MARATHON BACKWARDS
New days of splendid perversions approach.
In kegs of frosted glass bitter liquid foams.
Grinning from shop windows,
People announce the continuity of defiant omens.
On lustful boulevards of sonorous extremities
Rave the smells of slit-carnation forests.
In the drawers of stolen flowers
Anguish. And colors
Driven out of the rainbow’s spectrum.
Flags flutter over the faces of the statues of liberty:
Democracy with the aureole of genuine brazenness.
In the startled eyes of city facades,
In painters’ canvases
Fatigue.
Under attack by world media – abysses:
Bosnia with tearful eyes, New York’s new cemeteries,
Iraq in the eyes of the blind …
A crimson feeling of closeness in chilled sensibilities.
A cosmic paradigm in people’s encounters on sidewalks.
Broken processions march in the agony of their torrid directions.
Human bodies in the tufts of the new morality.
They drug philosophy in the palaces of fishy profit takers,
Priests rape boys in the seminaries of the Holy See,
They force women into the shells of butterfly larvae.
In the factories of Bill Gates’ birthplaces of new intelligence
The future on its knees demonstrates a marathon backwards.
Whence a butterfly,
Delicate and timid,
Alights on the edge of a sonorous fountain
And whispers a song to the primordial elixir.
Love is bashfully being born on the benches in the city park.
EYES TO THE SKY
The hen-pigeon cradled all three of her chicks
In the shade,
Quenched their thirst with the water
From the cave’s spring.
Next to the fire, the pigeons built their nests.
Three nights after midnight they wandered,
From the mouth to the source …
A hundred hands holding one loaf of bread,
Clouds full of winter …
All eyes look to the sky.
The stars wane.
On each forehead, as on a granite block of ice,
The universe engraved.
If the tear lived in a flower,
It would turn into an apple of ice,
At dawn the sun would set.
PATRIA
In the casino
Dark-skinned
Passionate
With the smile of the early flower
A stripper …
It was a moist dawn above the oak tree
They moved out like bull
ets
Like seeds
Carried down-wind by desire
Moving fists full of partings
In dreams the scent of the grass on St. George’s Day
Women’s chirps turned into a flower
In the moonlight by the spring’s magic spell
To some – a barge by the water
To some – the shadows of the moonlight
To some – gentle misty eyes
Trembling
All is melting
The field is budding
The seeds are sprouting
They scattered over the harbors
Down the metros
And left messages on train terminals
In spring feverish flocks of birds
Bring the smell of home
Our sights cross-eyed
The woman’s dance slowly abates
As rain slowly stops
Or in the orchard’s midst
The awakened night finds its strength
FEAR
The fire intertwined itself in their dawn,
Stripping the sleeping bird of its feathers …
Forcing thorns into their eyes.
The moonlight dissolved the darkness.
Tree trunks everywhere like prison guards,
Yet the wild strawberry sprouts in the grove,
Spreading its warmth skyward,
As if regenerating the world with its heat.
This is not a maple forest.
The winds here have coughed much,
Scattering across the highlands
Green snow instead of evergreens.
Heads slowly boiling with silence.
Along the forest the fire creeps,
Freeing the horses of their heavy shoes,
So everything fertile in the rock will bear fruit.