Roads
You have decided I am not to be and no matter what
You advance towards me And in a rush
Laughing and weeping
You sweep
And crush
All that’s ahead of you.
You have decided to destroy me no matter what
Yet you fail to find
The right road
To me
For
You know the forged and beaten roads
And no other
(In fact they are small and barren
Though to you
So vain and mighty
They seem
Laborious
And Long)
You know but those roads
That lead
From the heart
And
The eye
But that is not all
There are roads that stretch out
With no trace of traffic
With no timetable
Nor deadline
You think your passage to wretched me
Is well secured and tight
It
Leads
From either left
Or
Right
You fool yourself repeatedly I’m to be reached
By some such routes
From south
Or
North
But that is not all
The plague
Seeks always
Cleverly my eyes
Beneath the waving wind-stroked ryes
From earthy roots where darkness jells
Yet from the never measured heights
From up above
The chest
Most vigorously
Can
Be pressed
By anguish
But that is not all
You do not know the laws of cleft
Between the luminous
And the dark
But that is not all
For you know least that in your self
The battles are most sore
That in your ownmost
Being
Are the proper wars
You know not then that you’re the least
Amid my
Many
Mounting
Evils
You do not know with whom
You’re dealing
You know nothing of my map of roads
You do not know that the road from you to me
Is not the same as the road
From me
To you
You know nothing of my riches
Hidden to your mighty eyes
(You do not know that to me
Far more
Than you think
Fate
Has bequeathed
And
Granted)
You have decided to destroy me no matter what
But you fail to find the right road
To me
(I understand:
You are a man in one space and time
That lives but now and here
And knows nothing of the boundless
Space of time
In which I am
Present
From distant yesterday
To distant tomorrow
Thinking
Of you
But that is not all)
A small selection of Dizdar’s poems appeared in MPT 17 (1973), translated by the late Anne Pennington.
Natalija BonicĀ“ was born in Tuzla, Bosnia and Herzegovina, in 1966. Two years later the family moved to Australia, where she lived until 1975. Back in Yugoslavia, in 1985 she studied English Language and Literature, and Philosophy, at the University of Split. She moved to Belgium in 1991 and in 1993 received an MA in Philosophy from the Catholic University of Louvain, where she is now in the Doctoral programme.
Translated by Natalija Bonic
Page(s) 42-45
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