​Poems by Mile Stojić 

1.
Strophes For Job
 
Why did you give me Lord the option to write
To take notes and remember what ought to be forgotten
Live in the small and cramped and long for the higher
Under this harsh sun, this gray sky.
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Why did you give me Lord the illusion to hope
To hold court in the blue sky and reign in the clouds
When you knew I’d fall and am still falling               
Into these crag-filled craters full of winter.
 
Why did you give me Lord the weakness to weep
To cross every threshold and go without looking back
And everything I wove and built surrender to the stronger
Whose greed is stronger and nobility feebler.
 
Why did you give me Lord the ability to love
And for my love to froth for years like Niagara
Wouldn’t I have fared better in heaven’s quarantine
In whose whiteness those who are scorned and unloved thrive.
 
Before whose door did you leave me to despair
With a body that cannot fly and a soul that like smoke drifts
Why didn’t you leave on the cruel Herzegovian mountain
That even on St. Elias’s Day is covered with hoarfrost.
 
Translated by Charles Simic
 
 
 
2.
I Love The Ones They Spit On
 
I love the mad, the ones who scream first
without calculating what they’ll gain, what they’ll lose
Those who always in the minority, who stood
to the side at concerts and sports stadiums
when the crowd asked for gallows and blood.
 
I love nitwits who don’ to wait till the end
to ask for their turn to speak. For them
the stake is ready, the fire is always slowly burning.
The greasy rope forever awaits them,
the lubricated guillotine, the put-together cross.
Right at this moment a thousand prisons
are being built for them few.
 
I love fools those who ignored the voice
of the cautious (who were the first to stick their head
inside a sack and still keep it there)
since they couldn’t look calmly at evil.
I love dunces who cursed the ones hard at works
building a wall, tearing down a bridge.
 
I love the ones they spit on and laugh at,
the ones who lack good manners
who rose against the Roman authority
of national paradise, those denounced
by their own brothers, left by their wives,
whom the priests’ cursed and students hid.
 
They were the ones who lit our way in the dark.
 
Translated by Charles Simic
 

​1.
STROFE ZA JOBA
              
Zašto si mi gospode dao mogućnost da pišem
Da zapisujem i pamtim ono što zaboraviti treba
Živjeti u skučenome i malom a težiti prema višem
Ispod ovog okrutnog sunca, ovog sivoga neba.
 
Zašto si mi gospode dao iluziju da se nadam
Da stolujem u plaveti i kraljujem u oblacima
Kad znao si da ću pasti i da još uvijek padam
U ove kratere oštre u kojima caruje zima.
 
Zašto si mi gospodine dao slabost da plačem
Da svaki prag prekoračim i odem bez osvrtanja
A sve što sam gradio i tkao prepustio si jačem
Čija je pohlepa veća a blagorodnost manja.
 
Zašto si mi gospode dao sposobnost da volim
I da se moja ljubav godinama ko nijagara pjeni
Zar bolje mi ne bi bilo u nebeskoj karanteni
U čijoj bjelini traju prezreni i nevoljeni.
 
Pred čijim si me vratima pustio dok očaj romori
Sa tijelom koje ne leti i dušom koja ko dim praminja
Što me nisi ostavio na suroj hercegovačkoj gori
Koja je i o ilindanu prekrita pokrovom inja.
 
 
 
2.
VOLIM POPLJUVANE
 
 
Volim one lude, što su prvi vrisnuli
ne racunajuci što ce dobiti, što izgubiti
One što su vazda bili u manjini. Što su
stajali po strani na koncertu i na stadionu
Kad je svjetina tražila vješala i krv.
 
Volim one blesave što nisu cekali kraj
da bi uzeli rijec. Za njih je
lomaca spremna, neprestano tinja
Uvijek ih ceka omašten konopac,
podmazana giljotina, skovan križ.
U ovom se casu zida tisucu zatvora
za nekoliko njih.
 
Volim budale što su prešutjele glas
opreznih, što su prve stavile glavu u torbu
(i još uvijek ih tamo drže)
jer im oci nisu mogle mirno gledati zlo.
Volim bene što su proklele izvodace radova
kad je podizan zid, kad je rušen most.
 
Volim popljuvane, ismijane,
One što se nisu obazirale na formu
Što su ustali protiv rimske vlasti
nacionalnog raja, one što su ih se
odrekla braca, što su ih napustile žene
zatajili ucenici, osudili svecenici.
 
Oni su nam osvjetljavali put.
 

Mile Stojić was born in Dragićina (Bosnia and Herzegovina) in 1955. He is a poet, essayist, analyst and journalist. He earned a degree in South Slavic languages and
literature from the Faculty of Philosophy in Sarajevo. Until June 1992 he lived in Sarajevo as a writer and an editor of literary publications. After that he worked at the Slavic Institute of Vienna University with the grade of reader. He compiled the
following anthologies: Iza spustenih trepavica, an anthology of modern Croatian poetry, 1991; In Schmerz mit Wut (with A. Isaković), Bosnian war literature, 1995; Bosanskohercegovačko pjesništvo XX. stoljeca, with M. Vešović and E. Duraković, 1999. His books have been translated into German, Polish, Italian, English, Bulgarian, Slovenian and Macedonian, and individual texts into some twenty languages. His poems have been included in all relevant anthologies of contemporary Bosnian-Herzegovinian and Croatian literature. He has received numerous awards. He lives and writes in Sarajevo.
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