Last night, returning from the warm hamam, I passed by the garden of the old imam, And lo, in the garden, in the shade of a jasmine, There with a pitcher in her hand stood Emina. What beauty! By my Muslim faith I could swear, She wouldn’t be ashamed if she were at the sultan’s! And the way she walks […]
I will approach the poem from the angle of language. If we listen closely enough, we will hear an arrhythmia in the language, i.e., an alternation of two opposing or colliding voices. In the first stanza, the language is clean, poetic, with a touch of solemnity: one balanced sentence stretches through four lines, with rhyming Turkisms, i.e., in the privileged […]
I know I am writing a letter that cannot reach its addressee, but my comfort is that it will be read by the one who loves us both. It is very late at night and I don’t feel like sleeping. In this time of night one can only talk to ghosts and memories, and I am thinking about the golden […]
I am crying Because of your love that made a slave of me Because of a love too feeble to free me You are crying Translated by Keith Doubt & Luisa Lang Owen – © 2006 Keith Doubt & Luisa Lang Owen
About you have all the songs been sung and there is nothing more about you to be sung About you has everything been spoken and there could be nothing else to be said about you Your linens have remained as mysterious as the night and your suitors as transparent as the morning And nevertheless I must still place you in […]
You are huge Terrible In your Immensity You are Strong Nearly a god But I am No one And nothing That is the key For you But Nevertheless You are mine I would not Be You The key is that For me A human Your Long arms Will never reach to My small frightened heart Translated by Keith Doubt – © […]
I wonder what I think of the phrase “Bosnian Spirit.” I admit that I seldom think of this phrase in itself, but then from another point of view it is even more self-defeating to believe that I will not be able to deal with it in any way, especially not reflectively, in the foreseeable future. Not for two reasons at […]
Consequences
from a green meadow, wounded, was staring at the sky. There was nothing for a million miles around. Yes, miles, as if the immense void that Roared around me was in fact the open sea. Stark and boundless. From everything, under the sky, Only a blind starkness remained that roared brutally. At first, to be sure, Serb frogs could be […]
It’s getting dark, and in the west someone’s foot Has knocked over a jug of wine, pouring it all over the horizon. The new moon looks like horns on a helmet in which, in films, Moses is shown. Pines smell of a mixture of lemons and incense A soldier, long and brittle like a rye stalk, is doing sentry duty. […]
After the Balkan War, the Turks suddenly left, but the hatred remained. Now it’s exploding in Bosnia. The hatred endures, although its subject has evaporated. The human soul has always lagged behind the world. The soul is a whirlpool mirroring in winter the cranes flown south in autumn. For five centuries the Turks were their guests. And they left overnight. […]
Can a people and its state be deprived of the right to their state insignia? The fleur-de-lis state insignia of Bosnia and Herzegovina (coat of arms and flag), used during the 1992-1995 war and several post-war years, was replaced by the international community with a new one that remains in use today. Instead of the golden lilies, which for centuries […]
and you know you are lying down in vain: tomorrow you will get up still more enervated than when you lay down. In the morning you get up from bed and you know that you are getting up in vain: yesterday’s day is awaiting you, with yesterday’s stress. With the humiliations of the day before yesterday. With the despair of […]
All on Board
One over-looked casualty of the war in Bosnia is her collective commitment to a pluralistic, tolerant, integrated society. Unconscionable violence and vicious propaganda were brought to bear against her heritage, cultural convictions, social practices, and civic order––making it next to impossible for Bosnia to sustain her multi-confessional and syncretistic-informed traditions. Tone Bringa, author of Being Muslim the Bosnian Way, writes, […]
Of all the things created and built by humankind as a part of life’s effort, nothing in my mind is better or worthier than bridges. They are more important than houses, more sacred, and more universal than temples. They belong to all and treat all alike; they are useful, always built for a purpose, at a spot where most human […]
A research attempt on the occasion of the collection of poems The Stone Sleeper by Mak Dizdar The collection of poems entitled The Stone Sleeper by Mak Dizdar has long been in our bookshop windows and on readers, critics, and reviewers’ desks––who spared no effort or word to praise it, to call for yet another review, however affirmative it might […]
On the palm of a hand a flower On the palm of a hand a shower On the palm of a hand ice And you You only worry about your worry Without worry Translated by Keith Doubt & Luisa Lang Owen – © 2005 Keith Doubt & Luisa Lang Owen
The snows are growing ever deeper and blacker like sins In a life that is drawing near its end Will we still have eyes When in the garden the apple tree bears its first white blossom Translated by Omar Hadžiselimović – © 2006 Omar Hadžiselimović
Bosnia is a name for a model of community life shared by the inheritors of different holy traditions. Its history bears witness to efforts to formalize this model in contemporary modes of thought. In an earlier period––the time of the Bosnian Bans and Kings––this model expressed itself in the effort to justify and establish communal life between different Christian communities. […]