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The Return To Pannonia*
When I return to the woods
by the low rivers,
in the rye and the crimson,
in the streams, in the reeds,
in the bulrushes and in the eyes of the deer,
passing through the Bosnian mountains,
towards the hyperborean Pannonia,
when I return
in mud and in fog,
in the reeds and in the swamps,
in the plains, in the corn and the straw,
when I leave behind the angels
with their instruments
and with flowers in their hearts,
the naked beings that lived
in the rocks,
when I leave behind
the coat of arms of the two roses,
the ruined olive mill,
the horse with the fiery mane
that saw me in the nights of self-denial,
the wormwood bending from the wind
above the bloody Krbava,
the spike and the scythe
outside the breathless earth;
when I set out recalling in my memory
the sharp rock in a hungry youth's bitterness,
the sublime rustle of the wind in the pines,
the planet Mercury shining near to the sun,
the mysterious sadness
of the ancient warrior.
When I leave the town on the shore of the Croatian sea
where the decomposed body of Saint Donatus stood
on the Roman square
with the sepulchral epitaphs
of combatants and lovers,
of the disobedient city of King Stephan
where still there stands a sign
of the death of Kotromanicó
close by his son Tvrtko and Vuk;
when I leave Casku and Nin :
The world will shine in the eyes of the living
like on those of the Trojan warriors.
Zlato Tomicic
Translated by Nizeteo & Tatum
From "This Night " Hamilton
*Pannonia is a Roman province which included the territory west of the Danube in today's Croatia and Hungary. |
