Translated
by Omer Hadžiselimović
The Archaeology of Hope
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 for
an old fancy of my
mother regarding my
future.
*
What Will the Doctor Say
-For Raymond Carver
On first reading it, I
overlooked that poem,
Raymond. It takes,
however, just one cell
to change its mood and make
alive that which
we'd failed to notice
till then.
I have no energy to read
“What the Doctor Said”
now that I, too, am
going to hear it. The noose
of words tightens after
the first lines and I can’t go
on. With the
unsteadiness of a blind person,
the streetcar is pushing
on through the fog of cold
streets as if it didn’t
have the tracks in front of it.
Your 26-years-old words
from the closed book are
warming my palm while
images are fast multiplying.
*
The Miller
I can no longer
recall from memory the
voice of Jusuf the miller.
I can’t separate it from
the murmur of water
and the creaking of
millstones.
I remember only the
images:
the pack saddle set down
in the grass,
the peasant untying the
sack, the horse
drinking from the river.
The wooden mill quivers,
but the image
is clear: through the
tiny holes beams of light
break in and insert
themselves into the roaring
semi-darkness where soft
wheat dust dribbles
onto the miller’s cap
and apron.
Grains ground to dust.
The days, too.
Dust to dust,
I hear father’s voice.
*
The Whisper of Shalwars
I should defend my
trade, but how
when this what I do,
except for a higher one,
has no sense at all?
In the house I grew up
in such questions were
not asked. You could
hear the rain pattering
on the roof and pouring
down from the gutters,
into the darkness...and
my grandfather, who’d
get up painfully,
coughing and tottering until
he became fully awake.
On workdays he delivered
mail from door to door,
never doubting the purpose
of what he was bringing
to people.
On weekends he worked in
the bakery: “He who has
ten children,” he’d say,
“must work ten days in a week.”
He lit the bread stove
in the bakery, kneaded the dough,
and turned over the loaves
with the long baking shovel—
just as I turn over
nonsense—so they wouldn’t burn. Grandma
you could not hear. Only
the whisper of her shalwars.
- Adin Ljuca was born in Zenica, Bosnia and Herzegovina, in 1966. He now lives in Prague, the Czech Republic. Ljuca has written scholarly works in the field of cultural history of South Slavic countries as well those of poetry and fiction and has also translated numerous scholarly writings. Ljuca’s main publications include Hidžra (Prague, 1996); Maglaj: Na tragovima prošlosti (Maglaj, 1999); Vytetované obrazy (Prague, 2005); Istetovirane slike (Sarajevo, 2010); and Stalaktit (Tešanj, 2015).
*
- Adin Ljuca was born in Zenica, Bosnia and Herzegovina, in 1966. He now lives in Prague, the Czech Republic. Ljuca has written scholarly works in the field of cultural history of South Slavic countries as well those of poetry and fiction and has also translated numerous scholarly writings. Ljuca’s main publications include Hidžra (Prague, 1996); Maglaj: Na tragovima prošlosti (Maglaj, 1999); Vytetované obrazy (Prague, 2005); Istetovirane slike (Sarajevo, 2010); and Stalaktit (Tešanj, 2015).
All Work Copyright©2015 by Adin Ljuca – All Rights
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