die young and leave a beautiful corpse
thus spoke rockers
but this is another planet here
on Padež hill
eleventh day of duty goes by
the first after Smajo’s death
we’ve smoked a bag of industrial weed
Sadmir was firing single shots over the breastwork
blew off the front sight of a rifle that lay
on the logs with which we’d fortified the trench leading to the dugout
a few small sight shrapnels
hit him above the left eyebrow ridge
Hajrija bandaged the wound with field dressing
it wasn’t enough for a day’s leave
die young and leave a beautiful corpse
thus spoke rockers
I shat on a shovel in a hollow behind the roof of the burrow
and tossed hot shit over to no man’s land
pissed into an empty tin of Icar beef, contracted in the trench like a worm
watering the mould of the forest floor
and I said to myself:
I won’t wash my hands
or my face
or shave
or clip my fingernails
does it matter what my corpse will look like
––––––––
I’ll gift my ribs to god for some future Eves
my earlobes will become mushrooms
tangles of my nerves will develop into mycelia
of a better man
***
Passing by the Markale market, I stopped for a second
I saw an angel at the market
on the tin roof of a stand he sat
below, in wooden crates
peppers, tomatoes, early potatoes
cabbage, onions and greens were arranged
his feet were dangling from the roof
gently touching the passers-by’s hair
he took a hat off a shopper’s head
a breeze was blowing, mixing the scents
of vegetables, fresh fruit, flowers and fish
he was getting into people’s faces
eyeing the vendors who worked the scales
he stared at their swollen, cracked hands
and burst out crying as he saw an old lady
gathering rotten vegetables from under the stands
it had started to drizzle
down the petals of a painted margarita
pale blue ink trickled
the flower looked like a whore with a pound of makeup
tears running down her cheeks
the cherub spread his wings and soared to the sky
and I was thinking, if there is poetic Justice
the angel, cloaked in night, will
rip out the heart of the vendor who cheats on the weight
but I don’t think so
for angels mostly pose
and freeze nude on the frescoes
***
Deliverance
I live beyond all things
I don’t belong to any -isms, nor did I come out from anyone’s overcoat
readings and literary festivals I hate the most
there I sense all the sorrow deposited in the people
a useless sediment, except for art
I live beyond all things
by Saturn’s ring
on Paradise Islands, in the amber houses
the last century has aged us prematurely
we’re a hundred years old
I live beyond all things
I learn from the spider and the red snail
I study the venation of the leaf
I try to be pleasant and glad
but that inner pulsation
strikes a different beat
a prophecy execrable and bitter
this act of facing the world —
the shepherdless meadow
where god sobs with shrugged shoulders
and there is no place for human life
Christ is a lucrative mannequin
and nightingales are grilled on McDonald’s flat tops.
***
Faruk Šehić (1970–) was born in Bihać, Bosnia and Herzegovina. He studied veterinary medicine in Zagreb until the outbreak of the Bosnian War. At age 22 he voluntarily joined the Bosnian Army and commanded a unit of 130 men as a lieutenant. After the war he studied literature and wrote and published his own literary works. His 2011 debut novel Knjiga o Uni (The Book of the Una) won the 2011 Meša Selimović prize (awarded by the Cum Grano Salis Festival in Tuzla, Bosnia) for the best novel published in Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, and Croatia, as well as the 2013 European Union Prize for Literature. His works have been translated into English, German, Bulgarian, and Macedonian. He lives in Sarajevo.
Mirza Puric, Asymptote Editor-at-Large (Bosnia and Herzegovina), was born in Bihać, Bosnia and Herzegovina, in 1979. He studied English at the University of Vienna, and has translated novels, stories, essays, and poems by Michael Köhlmeier, Chris Abani, Rabih Alameddine, George Orwell, Iain Mac a’ Ghobhainn, Joan Lingard, Khaled Hosseini, Nathan Englander, Alan Warner, Agnes Owens, Bill Douglas, and others. He plays baritone guitar and Bass VI in two noise bands.
Photograph by Dženat Dreković