The recent decision of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to not hold Serbia directly responsible and accountable for the genocide that occurred in Bosnia-Herzegovina is troubling and disappointing. The decision strengthens the cynical perception of the international community obstructing Bosnia-Herzegovina’s need for justice to rebuild a stable and unified society. In 1995, the Dayton Peace Agreement fractured Bosnia-Herzegovina into […]
Humankind will be able to recall July 11th and 12th in 1995, remembering the genocide that was committed in the United Nations safe area, Srebrenica, by the criminal hordes controlled by Ratko Mladić. Shortly after the commission of the crimes in Srebrenica, with blood on their hands and with ardent cannons, the same hordes took off to a second United […]
1. The Mural from Vozuca On the wall of an abandoned house in Vozu!a near Zavidovi!i a poem was discovered. Above the poem a message: Here it is still autumn and it is raining. I have decided, tomorrow I am leaving. And before I go, I am leaving you this poem, so write it down, if you want. If I […]
After the Second World War, Samokovlija dedicated one of his stories to his mother, Sara, with these words: “I’m happy that she died before the war and did not experience the horrors to which we have been witnesses.” I cite this dedication, the bitterest of all dedications I know, with an uncertain memory, for nowhere in his collected or selected […]
To a dear friend and a member of the Sarajevo Shakespeare Society – (Sarajevo, Bosnia, 1992-3, and beyond) “Nermin Tulich, a young Sarajevo actor, lost both of his legs in the artillery attack on the bread-line…”, Associated Press (AP), on Bosnia’s misery What has shorn off the legs of Nermin Tulich? What madness has left them twitching on a Sarajevo […]
(TV interview: Question: “Then Bosnia is lost, Mr. Secretary?” Answer: “Oh, no, no; we are doing everything we can; no, no…” – Spring 1993) Turning back (in anger?) and seeing clearly: yes, then Bosnia is lost! Lost in the coils of good will, of global love and cosmic order, lost in the pragmatic betrayals, in the fog of political correctness, […]
For M.H. This town, catching up to us, clasping us to its arms and around our necks – we watch it from above. We are Caesars of the moment, breathing in Sarajevo’s breath: human bodies, divine blossoms, murmuring stations… the calm of the Japanese cherry in the State Museum Garden, and those who were dear to us and nested in […]
The girls of my youth, nausicaas The girls of my youth, dianas, danaias, lolitas they are only in their forties, but they are already gray haired, creased foreheads, wrinkled hands those “ladylike ones behind the sewing machines” Many of them are already toughened, have already forgotten love as a foreign language is forgotten. The girls of my youth, ruths and […]
Prologue – Svetlana Broz “Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, today is a gift.” – Anonymous “You must be the change you want to see in the world.” – Mahatma Gandhi The Schools for Civil Courage, organized for 218 young people between the ages of 15 and 25 by the GARIWO non-governmental organization with the help and support of […]
Bosnia has always had a special place in the heart of Bosnian Franciscans through the centuries of their activities. They felt it deeply as their homeland and their home, and they have never questioned it or abandoned it. They enshrine it as their native land and love it as the country of their fathers. They have lived for Bosnia, loved […]
As you pour yourself a scotch, crush a roach, or scratch your crotch, as your hand adjusts your tie, people die. In the towns with funny names, hit by bullets, caught in flames, by and large not knowing why, people die. In small places you don’t know of, yet big for having no chance to scream or say good-bye, people […]
Trains are the finest metaphor for present-day Bosnia-Herzegovina. Three and a half years after Dayton the imaginary state is still slumbering between the covers of the famous Accord, and life is for the most part going on without it and despite it. It’s much the same with the trains. Hundreds of kilometre of tracks are overgrown with grass, with wrecked, […]
The “Hasanaginica” (Hasan Aga’s Wife) is a folk ballad written in the ten-syllable heroic epic line. It first came to the attention of West Europeans when it was published by the abbot Alberto Fortis, in his two-volume Viaggio in Dalmazia (A Voyage in Dalmatia, Venice, 1774). Fortis gave the song both in Serbo-Croatian and in Italian translation. The Viaggio was […]
What gleams white in the green forest? Is it snow, or is it a swans? If it were snow it would have melted by now; And swans would have already taken to flight. No, it is neither snow nor is it swans, But the tent of Aga Hasan Aga. He is suffering from terrible wounds. His mother visits him, and […]
Here lieth Gorčin the soldier In his own land On an alien Patrimony I lived But I summoned death Night and day I never hurt a fly I went off To be a soldier I’ve been In five and five campaigns Without shield or armor So that at last These throes Might cease I perished of a strange pain Not […]
Sometimes … I catch my inquiring look in the mirror: I see, not just another, but a completely unknown and utterly unsympathetic man who stares at me. In those lineaments I try to find something that is mine, I try to recognize some personal seal, something that can tell me that this is me and not somebody else … but […]
At a roundtable on the topic of “Yugoslavia in World War II in 1941,” held in Belgrade on July 2nd and 3rd this year [1991], I asked for the floor after your presentation. I searched for an answer to one of your arguments. The dialogue had just started, and you and I agreed publicly to continue the dialogue via letters […]
FIRST Enclosed within a body encased in skin You dream of heaven’s fecund return Housed in a brain imprisoned in a heart The sun you revere from this dark cave Imprisoned in flesh locked up by these bones How can this space To heaven be bridged? SECOND Confined in a ribcage captured by silver In your grandeur no finer than […]
The introductory cycle in The Stone Sleeper consists of five poems under the common title of “A Word About Man,” but since each of these poems treats the same motifs in the same way, we can also read them as a single poem in five sections. The key to these lines [in “First”] is to be found in the play […]
None can say where it is found We know little but ’tis known Beyond mountain, beyond valley Beyond seven, beyond eight And still sadder and still madder Over weary, over bitter Over hawthorn, over thornbush Over drought and over hindrance Over dread and over doubt Beyond nine and beyond ten There below beneath the earth Over yonder beneath the sky […]
