Tomica Bajsić

Tito gnaws a pig’s head in the attic
eyeing the street in fear that his parents might catch him
I don’t give a damn / he thinks / I’ll escape on my bicycle

Tito riding a tram in Vienna under cover
wearing his best grey suit thinking:
why should I be any worse than those students?

Tito riding over Mt Romanija
followed by old Nazor stumbling through the snow
Vladimir Vladimir / thinks Tito benevolently

Tito waving at the rows of kids from his Mercedes
red bandannas are tied around their necks like nooses / the Sun
will once grow dark / ponders Tito philosophically

Tito is elegant even in death
here are the mourners listed alphabetically:

bears rhinos lions / chess players
cineastes / circus acrobats / clerks
corn seller at work station no 7
Cuban cigar industry / employees of the Institute for the History
of the Working Class Movement / the English Queen
Greenpeace activists / heads of the tenant’s councils
historic figures / hippies / honour students
Ilich Ramirez Sanchez a.k.a. “Carlos” / men with moustaches
officers from firemen’s clubs / opera singers
presidents of fishermen’s societies / pretty women
primary school teachers / punks / reserve policemen
retired warrant officers / Sai Baba
soccer players / tailors

Tito showed up again in a balloon above eastern Africa
pointing his binoculars at a herd of zebras
those devils with stripes / thinks Tito to himself / they are all the same

Tito says NO to Stalin and Stalin
responds I don’t care anymore / who gives a fuck
do you know how to calculate?
I have twenty one thousand eight hundred and fifty six of them
ground into the leaves of the Katyn forest / I have three hundred thousand
secretly burried ones
I have ten million of those liquidated in liquidations
I have all of their IDs / the photographs of their children / the letters
filled with unwarranted optimism / their pencils / small change
I’ve got them all neatly placed on file

English translations Damir Šodan

To Mara, on the twenty seventh day of your birth

Light and shadow: separating …
And 27 days ago they were one!
Your dark almond shaped eyes are now looking for contours.
Born into this world with no gear of your own.
You are so little you don’t even know your name.
You want to win us over with that smile
Of a newly-built heaven.
What a smile that is! All the Alpine bees
And all the forest fires of Mongolia
All the 350 Church towers of Salvador
And all the plankton of the Atlantic
Have found recluse in the heaven
Of your smile forged in a secret place
Known only to a few levitating saints.
You look around yourself in wonder, but I have to tell you
That in your 10,000-year-old dark eyes
I can still see the reflection of that calm lake
Whose depth is immeasurable.
For me that lake is like an unknown memory.
Scientists call it the black hole of space.
Some simply call it a sack of coal.
While the religious call it the Spirit.
Your eyes until recently
Were like two Indian canoes
Rowing light-heartedly through the endless universe.

English translations Damir Šodan

On the airplane Miss Love sits next to the window so that she can watch
the clouds, white clouds, dense and soft like spun sugar
those foamy clouds that are good only for walking
in sleeveless T-shirt. Late in the afternoon
(the hour when her hair receives that golden hue)
the sun tends to beat hard up there
at these haights.
There is a man sitting next to her
Suspiciously observing her hands
Full of scratches and bruises.

Miss Love sits on the plane with her knees pressed tight against each other
clutching a macrobiotic dinner in her lap while the items
she purchased nestle under her legs. there is a teddy bear-shaped rucksack
on her back where she keeps her wedding dress and the urn
with the ashes of her late husband, the well known singer
whose name she forgot.

He’s been sitting there in that teddy-bear-shaped knapsack for quite some time now
Miss had burried a handful of his ashes
under the willow tree in her garden while she mixed the other two with clay
and made tiny saucers, and a handful of it was unfortunately
inadvertent blown away:

ending up in the ventilation system shaft.
As for the rest: Miss Love always carries it with herself on her journeys
keeping it close to her heart – like a talisman.

English translations Damir Šodan

I entered the room and found you asleep, so still
I thought you were dead.
There would still be things we could say to each other
Even if we lived two hundred years.

English translations Damir Šodan