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