One Poem by Tatjana Bijelic

 

WHAT THE PRIEST DIDN’T SAY

 

It was brave to be born

in 1944, said the priest at my father’s funeral

and we saw

his mother dragging a black barrel up the hill

the barrel the baby’s shelter with no pacifiers

she told him not to cry and he chewed on his baby

fists, forgetting hunger and dry pillows, the smell of bread

his cramped little feet soaked in pee

she showed him how to stop breathing and need nothing

when soldiers with knives were passing by

looking for moving objects, women and rabbits.

 

It was brave to leave the village

leaving for school, and we saw

the mother beseeching his father to let the son go

down the road, with a wooden suitcase, alone

for there were brothers to work at home

in the close-knit community, and we saw

the families sharing a single bedroom and daughters-in-law

getting up at 4 a.m. to milk and clean and take the orders

day in day out while children were dying from negligence.

You’ll give birth to more, fathers kept saying

to wives and lovers, and yes,

it was brave to sell the eggs for his books

and save him again, dear grandma.

 

It was brave to build one’s own house

and bear the loss of losing it, we added

remembering the ‘90s war and the days of being nobody

with bits of furniture scattered over other people’s courtyards

broken and drenched in rain, my writing desk survived

without writings, his drawers without cravats and business cards

a lot of us were expelled and clinically dead and it was brave

to claim the ravaged space again and start anew, united

in the sadness of growing old, my parents

(though he was sadder and more isolated)

led the life of a mother and her son

and there was a barrel, a black one

in the rear of their garden.

 

It was brave to endure the pain

of separation, and be blessed among the righteous,

and we saw

his contorted face refusing to shape his final words

the painful performance of his dancing fingers, transcending senses

his shrunken body rejecting water, gasping for air, the ambulance

moving slowly, no problem no priority

a crushed grasshopper taken out for a routine burial

to the hospital where the vultures sucked

the last three drops of his blood, pronouncing him a corpse.

 

It was brave, I’d say, to see him smiling and hiding

behind his own coffin

just two days after my mother saw the apparition of his mother

feeding him blackberries

taking him home.

 

 

Tatjana Bijelic teaches American and British literature and Creative writing at the University of Banja Luka, Bosnia and Herzegovina. She is the author of three award-winning poetry collections: Edge Without an Edge (Rub bez ruba, 2006), Two Roads from Oxford (Dva puta iz Oksforda, 2009) and One More Ticket for Picaro Trance (Karta više za pikarski trans, 2015). Her poems have been published in various journals and anthologies and translated into German, English, Hungarian, Slovene, and Macedonian.