I’m turning over a new leaf, I’ve got my health back

I’ll write about love again, I murmur

to myself while the chock-full bus

tilts dangerously on a curve like a blue

flower on its too-frail stem

I will spend this day looking

at façades freshly painted in shiny

Austrian ochre around Zrinjevac Park

I will fill my eyes with the contents of show windows

with Italian fashions that look good

only on teenagers

I will spend a bit of money on useless trifles

in a nicely arranged shop the radio softly

announces new reports of continued fighting

The death toll matches the size number

of the T-shirt with white beads on it

that I’m looking at

On the hanger an empty sleeve sways

in which occasionally for no clear reason

nervously twitches an imaginary limb stump

I go out to a perfectly level pavement

and pant as if climbing a slope

Passersby look at me oddly

I left my sunglasses behind

because it was raining

when we fled from the besieged city

Zagreb, 13 November 1994

tr. W. Browne

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