A Missed Rendezvous

By Miske

Visit the graveyards and dead…

And you will learn about the people…

Or what is left of them….

See this country, this town…

The large graveyard still filling with dead…

Yet without bullets or war…

While still walking, on our feet…

Where even a hope vanished…

Where there are insolent, armouring tombstones…

Hugging cruces and crosses, barely seeded…

Just there, at one of such places in Mostar, Liska street

I glimpsed your picture, my dear, and I am writing you this letter…

Late love poetry, more like a morbid novelette

Sitting on the steps, in one of the Old Town corners…

A piece of paper on my knees

And with my numbed hand I am writing these words…

Winter has already gripped Mostar, my darling…

It won’t be long before the bura starts moaning with its mad crescendo …

Long dark nights are on their way, bridges will stand deserted…

Full of longing, as the arms wrapped around only own shoulders are…

I waited for you last night, again, as so many times before…

By the dry fountain, in front of the former department store, HIT…

I was looking for you three days ago insanely, from Avenia towards Lucki Most…

Dashing by the Neretva at 100 kilometres per hour, screaming your name to the taxi driver…
I sat by the Musala fountain for hours…

Wandered through Lenin promenade, ran across the Bulevar…

Then via Semovac to the Old Bridge, though Tito street back to Carina…

All in vain…

You are not to be found…

This is yours and mine unfulfilled rendezvous

The encounter delayed forever…

If I had accidentally met a lady resembling you and of our age

I would have invited her to the former TIN, ordered two vodka and orange and two coffees…

One sweet and one bitter…

As we used to do…

You would have drunk both coffees and I both vodkas….

Or was it the other way round?

And I would love you from the bottom of my heart…

I would kiss your hands, watered with my tears, my darling…

You made me cry so I could never forget …

Either you, or that heavy, cold rain of Mostar in autumn…

It all started in 1991 or 1992….

Even earlier, perhaps, yet we never noticed…

We were preoccupied with our own heart beats and our youth…

Some evil people were setting the scene of the new times…

They burned Mostar and brought in the darkness…

Which is still here, roaring with its dark blaze…

Looking at your picture, I am reading some other names:

Mustafa killed on 25th January…

Marko died on 17th March…

Dragica killed on 25th December…

All of them Mostar men and women…

All of them deceased, none remembered…

A tale of death and destruction, far too long…

On graveyards everywhere there are children buried, mothers, fathers, families…

Stained with earth, buried in their final embrace….

Uncounted dead, all over the town and the country…

Witnesses of the shattered past of the forsaken country and devastated people…

You too are gone, you died…

And I am still waiting and looking for you tonight on the streets of our own town…

I am searching for your eyes in the eyes of other women, who are rushing to some other rendezvous
on the old Corso…

I am looking for your smile in the smile of a girl, who sitting on a bench in the park under pale lamp
light is reading the verses of Pero Zubac to her lover:

‘In Mostar I loved one Svetlana, one autumn…’

In the crowd of people buying tickets in a new Mostar cinemascope

I don’t see or recognise the actors, but expecting to see you on the screen by some miracle, only for
a moment…

I feel I would love you every second of my life, I would drink red wine…

I would play the accordion, dive into the Neretva off the bridge, have children with you…

I hear the verses of Olga Bergholc echoing in my ears:

‘Nobody is forgotten and nothing is forgotten’

Is that really true, Olga…?

It seems nobody remembers either distant or recent deaths any more…

Black seeds, planted in vain, hundreds of hectares of dead…

Silent music under the tombstone breaking me apart, making me mad…

And one heart still beating from the ground, in evil syncopation of millions of dying…

My darling, I cannot even describe Mostar to you as it is today…

They used to call it the most beautiful city of our former country, the city of light…

Today Mostar should be ashamed of the ugliness, dirt, darkness and evil which have gathered now
for 20 years or so…

And I should be ashamed because I watched it silently and allowed them to kill even my memories…
But every time I come here, I will bring you flowers, at least…

Or a bouquet made of dandelions and grass brought here by the northern wind from the hills

Bitter herbs entwined with Neretva moss…

And fallen leaves of the plane trees at Rondo…

Spiced with the sweet smell of lime trees and fresh fig blossom…

The skin of roasted chestnuts, two or three pomegranate seeds or spring cherries…

And maybe a dried rose from your herbarium which you once gave to me…

Which I still treasure, although I am not sure why…

Perhaps its purpose was a moment like this one…

To remind us both of a lost and unfulfilled rendezvous…

And of a forgotten and buried youth…

I give you my word that I will teach my children to hate war and to be good people…

Other than that, my tears and my sorrow, I can promise nothing…

I really cannot…

I don’t know how to…

I must not forget…

Miske- November 2013

(P.S. In memory of dead Mostar, deceased Mika Antic and still living Pero Zubac)

Translated from Serbo-Croat: Nerma Burch