POEM FROM THE SIEGE OF SARAJEVO

BEGINNING AFTER EVERYTHING


After I buried my mother
(under fire, I sprinted from the graveyard)


after the soldiers came with my brother
wrapped in a tarp
(I gave them back his gun)


after the fire in the eyes of my children
as they ran to the cellar
(the rats ran ahead of them)


after I wiped the old woman's face
with a dishtowel
(terrified to reveal a face I knew)


after the ravenous dog
feasting on blood
(just another corpse in snipers' alley)


after everything


I wanted to write poems like newspaper reports,
so heartless, so cold,
that I could forget them, forget them
in the same moment that someone might ask me
'Why do you write poems like newspaper reports?'




Goran Simic, from The Sorrow of Sarajevo  (English version by David Harsent)