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Identity
Mesa Begic
illustrations and translation by jack richold

 

                        IDENTITY (IDENTITET):
                        MB2302977341927

                        You ask what I am?

                        Born as
                        a wish, a child, a tale, a dream,
                        black, blue, partisan and yellow,
                        a fool, a love,
                        not hatred

                        I grew and was
                        permanence, a swimmer, suicide,
                        an apology, a crime, seven words,
                        one hundred words, as-many-as-you-need-
                        words, a gesture, never fast, a lie,
                        a lie because of the truth, a promise,
                        the friend who listens. I was music.

                        Now I am
                        sea and sky. Cloud and rain.
                        Two clouds, the wind that drives them.
                        The dust that forgets the morning.
                        The berry by the roadside.

                        I don’t know how to hate
                        or sleep.
                        Looking for what I can’t be
                        I run from waiting.
                        I know. I wait.

                        Every moment I become
                        name, number, shadow, marijuana,
                        firewater, winner, mountain,
                        loser, silence, memory,
                        a circle, a word,
                        the end so I stay at the beginning.
                        I do not hate.

                        This is what I am
                        and some more details.

 

THREE STEPS BEFORE AUTUMN
(TRI KORAKA ISPRED JESENI)

Because
of three
events
statements
conceptions
three of me
hanged
on three trees
we swing
three hundred years

 

 

THEM, HIM AND ME
(ONI ON I JA)

They would say 
that I was listening
as he talked
about his sad life.
In fact
I was listening in my own way
to his tragic confessions.

And sometimes I smiled
as if understanding
as he told me things about things
that I can’t remember.

His voice was
Unheard and
Important
and, really,
I forced myself to look like
a sincere listener.
For him, no doubt, this all meant a lot.

 

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