Beginnings

I was born in 1930, amphibious year in between disasters
I’ve left my native city for good in ’67
I left it many times before & returned many times since
Until that year, it was 1991
.....................when it left me
Alone with my writings, Nena,
.................... a few friends, smouldering memories,
Mourning, indignation.

When i was 11 i fled from the killers speaking my language
Already i had begun learning other languages
I had refused to learn playing the piano, some obscure
Daimon led me to say
....................»I’ll learn languages instead«, deciding
Daimon whose bitter tears
.................... into my soup at age eight scotched
All talk of going to Palestine.

When i was 11 i heard it on the radio
.....................the Germans were bombing Beograd
When i was 69 i saw it on television
.....................the US were bombing Beograd
Between the bombings my life was spared
.....................i owe it to the dead
To speak up against fear: articles for Wall Newspapers
First utopian sketch at 17, first poem at 21
On a May First, already

Elegiac, a girl was leaving me, the Party was leaving me
(I knew the first and was to learn the other). When
I was 13 i changed from
....................a refugee in my carved-up country
To refugee sundered from my country
....................amid another language
Crossing a narrow sea with hundreds in a fishing boat, seriously
Holding on to the one suitcase

Too young to be afraid amid minefields, under Nazi bombers
No more anxious than usual for a confinato
Whose parents could be shot any morning. So i crossed from occupation
To liberation, into the city of Bari
...................marvellous to youthful eyes
Where horse-drawn coaches had a plank
...................at the back between the wheels
For daring schoolboys to jump on.

When i was 21 my daimon decided, stubborn daimon,
Walking the sunlit streets of a Spring Sunday
To quit the repetitive certainties of engineering for the discoveries
Of arts & letters, of the planks
...................that mean unforeseeable life
People in student theatre
...................won out over things in the lab
With my heart in my throat.

Thus it all took shape, in the yellow afternoons of Zagreb
In the sunlight blazing back from Adriatic wavelets
Between the lines of Balzac
...................& Shakespeare, the Russians & Krle_a,
Tito & Hegel, Engels
...................& Lenin on the two souls
All irretrievable now, the communist
...................youth, confident hopes,
& i was on my Way.

Reflections

Some grow up to know well the names and kinds of trees, others
Of city streets (Mirkec knew all those of Zagreb
Better than any taxi-driver)
....................i grew up knowing departures
Thru guarded borders, but reading Dante, & Bert, & Nazim
Understood i was one of the demographic tens of millions
Exiled by injustice.

I am lucky: i’ve slept mostly in my own bed, even if at times
In poor rented rooms, & only twice, briefly, in friendly
Camps for refugees, a pet nightmare
....................like the car backfires
Bursting upon my ear like German bombs;
....................i haven’t really hungered
Tho near enough to guess at it
& quite near enough to understand terror & humiliation
& how reason is the only shield & sword
In proletarian hands, labour-power
....................sellers of brawn & brain
Like BB, my example in politics:
.....................»a party consisting of one person«
(His writings, friends, his unforgotten memories)
»Closely allied to communists«.

I’ve loved many women of my time, loved the best image
Of my possible self in & together with them
Monogamy comes to me as a kitten purring at my
Ankle, i stroke distractedly
...................its head, with real affection.
I’m changeable but always loyal, i envy only the dead
Milton, Marx and such ilk.

I rode a bicycle around Zvonimirova Street as a boy
A Vespa around Zagreb & an NSU scooter to Lo¨inj
At the age of 30 i flew
.....................for the first time, Dubrovnik to Beograd
I’ve had three small cars, two accidents, & left driving gladly
I’ve survived the worst of capitalist realia, bombs & cars
I’ve been lucky

To escape & learn to know much Europe, much North
America, the warm seas & breezes of the Caribbean
& Mediterranean, & of course Japan
....................that princess descended from the Moon
Cruel & kind; & i learned from the gods of the waves
....................of the Sava
& Thames & Avon & the Seine, Saint-Laurent & the Spree,
The plangent fates of humanity

& returned to the waves some insights i learned. My poems
In two languages, published in obscure places
On three continents, have been read by a few friends, so many
Numbers for the absent biographer
....................the poems are the best me
& the best i can say for myself is
....................i kept the faith comrades
In this sad & wondrous time.

Retrospect

What did i want? The pursuit of happiness when young, but more & more
One thing: to live this brief life on beauteous Earth
Not like an exploited tenant
...................buckling down to parasite bosses
Nor like landlord, but like steward
...................handing on to those coming after
Our family house preserved, cleansed from the worst vermin
Maybe even repainted.

I wanted to believe, as brother Nazim, in the trees,
The wheat, but above all the sea – thalassa, thalassa!
& in my strange fellow forked
...................animals, man unkind,
In my own class, presumed intellectuals: alas, i could not
Even women not rarely failed me
...................or i failed them, class
Corruption runs deep...

I grew discontented with the worsening
...................times, not happy to be
A nay-sayer like mad Swift, but making the best of a bad obligation
As the addictive drug of destruction
...................spread our rulers among,
Disliking not merely our murdering set-up but on top of it
The cruel gods of our small cosmic sector, the sadistic
Godlet of blind biology.

Surely other universes must be better made, surely
We could make even this botched world better!
More similar to Mozart
...................beauteous like Botticelli
Stern & compassionate like all great teachers, a forgiving mother
Infinite like the wine-coloured sea.