In front of the decorated tree at Clinton Square a group of protestors. Not holding champagne but a banner: Ceasefire. A worthy motif for a greeting card. Beyond the tree on the back page of our imagined card, People skate and make merry, though Christmas in Bethlehem is called off. The lights of our colorful ornaments cannot […]
(January 31, 2017 – January 31, 2024) In the rich history of Czech-Yugoslav cultural relations, few individuals have left as profound a mark as Dušan Karpatský, who passed away seven years ago. In stark contrast to the controversial reactions in the South Slavic region to his death, his associates, admirers and friends – particularly Andreja Stojković – organized, in that […]
for Christina Pluhar I let the sirens’ voices lead me and began a new day. Even not knowing the words I know this is how one sings of love and freedom. We have run a long road, from morning to dark. Régimes have changed as seasons do, people fallen like leaves. Odysseus had been warned: Plug your ears, they’ll seduce […]
The city opens up in the morning, when, giddy from sleep, it throws off the covers of night. It greets passers-by with a gap-toothed asphalt smile full of holes and fillings and hugs them with its enchanting tree-lined streets which aren’t so easy to categorize in English. But I adore sidewalks, even when they are humpbacked. They are the […]
for Dominika Křesťanová Dear Wayles, I’m back from a long journey. Rain saw me off in Prague and greeted me in Syracuse. Were the heavens lamenting my departure or my return? Or was it just a normal change of location which I try to assign some emotional higher sense to? The plane took off gently, pierced the Prague rain and […]
For Petr Hruška Short days of a long winter, the sun blinds you worse than in midsummer. On the white snow, dotted with raccoon pawprints, falls the dark shadow of a pine trodden down by my ski tracks from yesterday. Nearby, footprints of a deer—lively traffic—if you can see it. This is no desert, as disparaging city folks claim, it’s […]
to give a final shape to something. Not a single cup I scoop up water in, not a single jug I carry it in attains the balance between full and empty. Today I dare not do anything more than to weed the garden, rake up the words, throw them on the compost, and wait for spring to turn them over. […]
There are things known and unknown, Between them there are, they say, doors. And while I stand and wait Before one such door Between the one that exists And the one who could not be born, I realize how vulnerable human beings are: Even the unborn can kill them. Translation: Esma Hadžiselimović
Bosnian-Herzegovinian literature has been translated to Czech more than to any other language. However, the poetry translations are so rare that each constitutes a special cultural moment. From 1911 – when the first Czech translation of selected poems was published – until today, an entire century has passed with a mere nine poetry translations. This edition of Milorad Pejić’s poems, […]
and the wind is driving a flock of tiny clouds, like sheep. Still, I’m not sure it will rain. You can’t rely on the sky, so I’m watering the tomatoes with extreme effort. They are starting to ripen, and I know I won’t be here to see them. I’m leaving, but I can almost feel the sweetness in the mouth […]
you don’t know what you’ll step on in a dark alley, behind the school, where someone was leaving someone, where a small betrayal announced big defeats. If you take a wrong step, you’ll be blinded by a flash of memory, your ulcer bursts, your brain hemorrhages. You wonder innocently; for new illnesses you can’t see old wounds. Translated by […]
Although it’s still summer the surrounding peaks are white with clouds of snow. The creek by the road is springing like a goat. You think, here it’s more beautiful than in heaven but that overpowering thought is relieved by a sudden shower: you seek shelter in a bower gone wild by a ruined house. In the living room, kitchen, hallway, […]
Looking for who knows what, I stumbled upon a set of silverware sunk to the bottom of the last box with things no longer needed. It does not fit in with anything in my kitchen or in my life except an old fancy of my mother regarding my future. Translated by Omer Hadžiselimović
to balance one’s accounts, friend, for every grain in the hourglass falls in its place anyhow. What used to hurt is now foreign: it had gone by like a movie on the screen while we, munching on pumpkin seeds, sat comfortably reclined in our dreams. But when the lights came back on after the show, a heavy feeling would remain: […]
it was such a winter that swans’ webbings were getting stuck to the frozen Vltava. And they could never fly away from my memory. Just like you. In such cold – it no longer hurt nor could it heal. One needed to wait. Translated by Omer Hadžiselimović
She’d pull a blanket over her head. She’d say: Although I see buds on branches, spring will not come again. Sometimes she didn’t have enough strength even to answer the phone. I’d wait outside the door, she wouldn’t open. We’d sit in silence – she on one side, I on the other – waiting for something to happen. And it […]
To Dana and Anna Redford and Newman, in the famous movie from ’69. The idols of generations. And why wouldn’t they be when they look good, shoot with precision and, in the most dramatic of moments, conduct dialogue with composure? Even when wounded and surrounded they know what to do: from Bolivia they would find refuge in Australia. “There we […]
New Year’s Day. Snow overlaid the minefield. Adin Ljuca Translated by Keith Doubt
Street lamps were burning on all sides and the decorated trees were shining bright. Petards, rockets, fireworks. The celebratory shooting made the atmosphere relaxing, almost home-like. I told her about a Dane to whom, over beer and in miserable English, I’d tried to explain why I wasn’t going home for Christmas. We pressed against each other in the cold, tiny […]
When the famous 1985 New York Times Book Review polemic between Milan Kundera and Joseph Brodsky (the latter, a poet; the former, a novelist—but I like them both more as essayists) came again into my hands after several years, I let myself be seduced by the text out of habit, enchanted by the beauty of the authors’ sentences—until I eventually […]