SELMA KOPIĆ

 

SELMA KOPIĆ

 

Beauty

 

Beauty,

You’re the one everyone wants

to have for themselves,

to be their flower in a bouquet,

a brooch on their lapel,

a medal around their necks.

Beauty,

you’re the one

that everyone is looking for

as a buried treasure,

as a ship looking for a port,

as a promised paradise.

Beauty,

You’re the prey of all hunters,

you’re a dream and an unfulfilled desire,

you’re a target to be hit.

Beauty,

it is not easy to be you!

You cannot escape anywhere,

There’s no place where you can hide.

Everyone wants you

and that's your fate.

Beauty,

as you flee and take refuge,

you fade and pass away.

If you surrender,

you’ll be like another book

they have already read.

What an absurdity!

You’ll be left alone someday!

Do you have a choice?

Does anyone hear your voice

tired of running away?

 

 

I Was Everything

 

Every day was joy,

every day was hope,

that our youth will not pass,

nor love, as it is now.

I tried to give you everything

as a sister, as a mother

and to repay you for happiness,

to make your life a fairy tale.

Now I see the end has come,

everything is sweeter to you

from someone else's hand,

the joy is long gone,

we are so far from the port.

I tried everything,

I was everything,

just to ease your suffering:

servant, friend, sister, mother,

brother's hand, ear, shoulder.

And now it all costs me.

Because I forgot one thing

-        except the woman,

I was everything.

 

 

 

My Love Is A Witch

 

My love is a witch!

She wakes up around midnight,

gets stronger every night

and keeps my eyes open.

So I look at the blue sky

like I'm looking for something,

like I'm calling someone,

and he is gone.

He left without turning,

he didn't even wave to me

when his car swerved

around the corner.

He trampled on my love,

he let me kneel and pray to God

for forgiveness without known sin.

During the day she is not seen,

not noticed.

At night,

she makes company with the moon,

and the moon sees everything

and knows everything

as well as that one and only

Lord in heaven.

I miss sleep,

and drive her out of my thoughts

I can’t.

I'm missing a break

of the power of this love,

because the stronger she is,

I'm getting weaker.

Lots of unanswered questions,

a lot of puzzles.

But the moon is silent

while the witch love circles the sky

and calls to come back

the one who will not come.

I'm enchanted,

for whenever appears the moon

my love is awake

as if it were noon.

My love is a witch on a broom,

while everything sleeps,

she shines.

 

SELMA KOPIĆ

 

SELMA KOPIĆ is a professor of Bosnian language and literature, born in 1962 in Tuzla, Bosnia and Herzegovina. She is the author of two textbooks and one workbook for primary school. She worked and works as a coach, reviewer, proofreader ...Her stories and poems have been awarded and entered anthologies in BiH and around the world.The most significant awards are:Third prize "Mak Dizdar" for unpublished collection of poems "Puzzle", BiH, 2008; Golden Plaque, "Poetry of the Year 2020", Balkan Poetry Union, BiH, 2021; First prize for the best foreign poem "I'm not ready to leave yet", Italy, 2020. She has published two independent poetry books: ‘‘Sign’’, ‘‘The Monument of love’’ and a joint collection ‘‘Cosmic Rainbow’’ with five other authors. Third poetry book ‘‘Puzzle’’ will be published these days by ''Darwish'', pulishing house from Bulgaria/ Germany.