Poetryzine magazine presents the selected poems by the Bosnian-French writer Jasna Samic
(cities and dreams)
Hometown
It seems that everything rots
And your mind is grave
Dug by the memory
Of the city transformed
Into a cloaca where
Ducats of thieves and
Evil’s lackeys twinkle
Where martyrs swagger
About their prison of pain
Bloody souls
Gaze silently
At the evil's lackeys
And their ducats
It seems that everything rots
Except these:
Lackeys of the evil
And their ducats
(Sarajevo)
The bridge
Before being white, it was grey
Before being solid, it was like a wave
Before being a rainbow, it was an undulating path between two fortresses
And seventeen houses where lived
A bachelor and the Mostari
The Sultan offered to the city a bridge -
A rainbow -
The French said: It’s more proud than the Arc de Triomphe
The Italian: It’s more solid than the Rialto
The Turk: It’s higher than a minaret
And the Arab said: It is a white camel
The poet wrote: This is a swan with the neck bent
A seagull with outspread wings
A snowy mountain
On the river
For centuries gulls land
On the back of the camel, color of the snow,
For centuries gulls flow
From the back of the camel into Narenta
Flowing under the white camel
Quiet and voracious
Color of jade
When the barbarians attacked it
The rainbow became a broken mirror
The camel's back - a wrecked ship
The gooseneck - icy torch
The wings of seagulls - two severed hands
Between the two banks:
A wound
*(Stari most, The old bridge in Mostar, is inscribed in the UNESCO list of
the protected monuments)
The New York rhapsody
During that autumn
New York was sprinkled
By fire
And the squirrels in Central Park
Were baptized by rust
While you were going on pilgrimage
Of the Beauty
You were discovering your past -
Your nature, you already knew it -
You crushed the nature under the feet
The joy flowed from trees
Immersed in the flame and
And spread like a rainbow over the sky
Over the branches and over the
Alleys of the Park
Like a bridge between the ocean
And time
Like the Woman in Black by
John Singer Sargent
You were centuries old
You set fire while you were walking
Sinking in dead leaves like
In soft prayer’s mat
Going through the path
When you went to pilgrimage
To bow down before the
Beauty
And to meet
The young man Bronzino
Before docking the Island of Böcklin
While Mezzetin sang
His serenade to you on a bench
Looking at the blue sky
And Louise de Broglie was
Wearing the same blue
Looking at you wherever you were
Whether you’ve been alone
Or with your friend
- Who seemed to be also
Sprinkled with fire -
Whether you were
In West Village
Or in East Village
Dining together
Under the trembling flame
Of the candle
The magic was breastfeeding you with
Its milk
Distilled from that multicoloured fall
Even today sometimes
When you are lonely
You are sucking the memory of the
New York Rhapsody
Which he dedicated to you,
With his sad eyes
You spread its music
To the secret places of the
Day
Thinking of his face,
Thin like a sabre and
You caressed his eyes
Filled with desire
With your own eyes
Under the trembling flame
Of the candle
When cutting the fog
With your feet
The picture of Pâris
Reappears in front of you
In the bed of dreams
In a gigantic museum of
Dreams
Adorned with portraits of
The Virgin Mary and her
Son
The Goddess
Crumpled and in tears
Watched from the wall
My naked body
Bewitched
By the inaudible music
At times she seemed young
More lush than Rubens's ladies
Lowering her gaze shyly and
Bearing in her arms Jesus Christ
Whose eyes were obtuse
And his body stocky
The lard hanged over his bloody sex
Adorned with a knife
Stuck in it
You were lying
Under the picture of the beautiful
Venus
Your body twisted like a snake
In a golden bed,
Your were bewitched
Totem of Kiss
Dance and
Dreams
The dome was
Decorated with the Day of Judgement
By Michelangelo
And with the Virgin Mary
By Alessandro di Mariano Filipepi,
In the funnel of Inferno
The shadows of dead
Were meeting
Carrying torches
Through the icy seas
They were
Torches
Ignited by the burning desire of
Your eyes
Like smoky clouds
Live spirits climbed up to the heights
Bearing in their hands
Chandeliers of ice
Instead of torches
While you were going to the other side of veil
Riding on your dreams
Going to the Eternity ?
Then suddenly,
As carried by a storm
You returned
To this world
Of illusions
Celebrating
Paradise
On Earth
Your lips were like moss
I spread my wings and
I rushed to the galaxies of Shamash
Triping on marble laders
Which touched clouds
Where pieces of my forgotten body
Were hanging
Leaving your home -
This bed of dreams -
And your face with soft lips like moss
The storm shook my memory of
Delights
In the king's palace
Inlaid with gold
Palace of illusions
Kisses
And dance
The palace smelled by odour of
Paradise
On Earth
The twinkling darkness
From the belly of the earth
The lover whisper:
The life is only the darkness which is
Twinkling
By the bodies of
Dead stars
Brighton beach
One evening
At Washington square
In the Olive Tree coffee
Where I was ordering borsch
And vine with olives
I met Tatïana Andreïevna
Who introduced me to her life
And to Brighton Beach
New York's quarter
To which later I travelled by train
With sleepy clerks
With suburbs' minors
Nannies, hairdressers
Secretaries and typists
With shore workers and painters
With body-builders and
Skinny types of Americans
Like Woody Allen
With hamburger eaters
Whose body fat seemed to move
Making noise similar to
The rattling noise of wheels
And all of them
Were sleeping on benches
Going into that area
Was the same as in
The Tretyakovskaya gallery
Going back to the nineteenth century
In front of me
The gigantic picture of
Aïvazovki’s sea appeared
And the beach covered
By Shishkin's sand
And along it Shchedrin's promenade
Made of boards
The wooden benches
On the boardwalk
Russian pensioners
Chatting with a bottle of vodka
While Russian moms
Are passing by with children
Carrying Coca-Cola cans
And American balloons
In the shadowed watch-tower
Above the beach
Those who were not destined to become Yesenins
Were watching sea and blood red sun
Above their heads
White Rilov's seagulls
Are swinging their wings
Incessantly
Along the beach promenade
Several Russian restaurants
And Russian coffee shops with
Russian matroshkas inside
And Russian titles above the door
Like they are all named Tatïana
Close to Russian book stores
Where the cheapest books in the world
Can be found
Perov's loafers idle
Who never went to Manhattan
And Repin's musicians and some
Kiprensky's Pushkin
Who are silent
From New-York's happiness
Muted
Slurping Russian-American coffee
The cheapest in the town
From real china cups
While one couple is eating kulich
In the restaurant
Where I wished to have a real coffee
From real fildjans
Some Briullov's lady is asking
Her mirror for hours
Who is the most beautiful in the world
While smiling waitresses
Are lazily swinging on chairs
The happiest ones on the planet
Their legs crossed
Who tell you ''help yourselves''
Even more slowly in Russian
With a smile
Smoking
On the terrace
They are looking at their legs
And not in Vereshchgagin’s sea
And sunset
As I am doing
In Russian coffee shop
On Brighton Beach
I am sitting and watching sea
Which becomes darker than Krim's nights
Decribed by Ivan Aïvazovski
After I was walking enough
Along the promenade's boardwalk
Where I was meeting Chekhov and
The Lady with a puppy
At every corner
Where Russian babies
Were crying in Russian inside their strollers
Whereas their moms were speaking softly
In Cyrillic
And then responding
On their American cell phones
Which were ringing in Russian
And Horasho shouting
Everything was Slavïanskoe
On Brighton Beach
Even myself
(translated by the author and Jasna Djuricic)
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