Skorpioni

ti ne slutis smis'o zalosnih soneta,
kesteni pred kucom duhu tvom su meta.

jasmina, svaki put me razoruzas kad pomislim nesto ruzno o srbima.

Vrhovni sud Srbije smanjuje kaznu surovim ubicama, monstrumima koji su ljudima pucali u ledja.

Kakav je to vrhovni sud? I kakva je to Srbija?

Najiskrenije, gadi mi se ovaj proliv od drzave. Srbija je monstruozno mesto.

The Writer Contemplates His Homeland While
A Famous Postmodernist Enters the City

For a long time everything has repeated itself most cruelly
and yet everything is happening for the first time:
the face of a young man whose life all night
has been draining out through your hands, from the hole
in his back. The face of the soldier
by the bus station, with the pleasant May sky
frozen permanently in his open eyes – you are making it up.
I declare – this is not the calm and distant face of History
and a little pool of blood; in its middle a hunk of bread
soaked in blood like that now fabled morning Bregov milk –
you’re making it up, I repeat, for the very first time:
the Sarajevan clay that falls on the big feet of the boy
in his Reebok trainers as they dangle
from a makeshift bier made from a cupboard door. No, you
are not to be trusted, you have entered the heart
of darkness that erupted and gushed forth into daylight.
You are an unreliable witness, and biased at that. That’s why
the Professor has arrived, entirely Parisien in mien, Mes enfants
he started, and his fingers repeat it for him: Mes
enfants, mes enfants, mes enfants, in the middle
of the Academy of Science the old greybeards could think
only of his shirt, glaringly and conspicuously white.
Mes enfants, this is the death of Europe. Then he changes
it all into a film, into frames, into mouthfuls like
histoire, Europe, like responsabilité and, of course
les Bosniacs. Look here, that’s the right way to look History
in the face, not like you: in the crude irresponsible fragments,
the sniper shot that penetrates deep into the skull,
the graves already covered over by irredeemable grass,
your hands placed across the image of
Edvard Munch, who himself, once upon a time,
also made everything up, with no hope.

Ferida Duraković

(Translated by Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill and Antonela Glavinić)