BUKARIĆ ENSAR

 

 

Inviting You For Tea

 

No, I don’t really drink tea!

I usually go for coffee gladly,

but I’m inviting you for tea

and I’ll drink it with you,

because of you who drinks it,

regardless of how bitter it is.

 

Even if you are at the end of the world,

I need you, man!

That is the symbiotic act

of us humans towards ourselves.

 

Translated By Haris Bukarić

 

Life Teaches Us

 

It is hard not to show emotions,

However, somehow, I am able to, life teaches us,

Some kind of a severe psychological disease, I guess,

Disorder or stress survived when I was younger.

I am afraid that now I am accustomed to be like that,

What human part would remain in me?!

 

I only held you firmly in my arms and said

You should only count on God

Wherever you go and whatever you do.

I did not have more words in me, they left me

When I needed them the most.

 

Your mother cried, in fact she made everybody around cry.

Some older nice people who were sitting in front of us,

Watched you, my son, hugging with your mother

And cried bitterly, the same way she cried.

 

In all of this you were a proper man,

Regardless to your age,

Minor boy born in 2003.

You did not disappoint me, although in all honesty

I might have preferred you did.

If you cried

And said it was hard to you to leave,

That you wanted to stay at home,

Probably I would have paternally returned you home

From Tuzla Airport, not caring for anything and anybody.

 

You did not cry, you passed the check points by the kind airport personnel,

While your younger brother tried to attract your attention,

To make you laugh or tease you, as he did every day.

You did not bother, did not pay attention to anybody,

As much confused, we who starred at you

Until the moment when your white T-shirts was hidden by the corner

Of the space in which we were not allowed to access.

 

Only one hour and some minutes remained until the plane for Freiburg would take off,

But we simply left the airport

As if we were hardly waiting to go home,

Strangely distant somehow.

 

From the pain inside me I complained that

The coffee at the airport is too expensive

And that they would do better with price reduced in half,

That they would earn more if more than one of the tables would be full.

Your mother did not listen to me, nor did your brother,

Simply, they were thinking of you,

And what about me, oh, who cares that by force they pulled out of me

Everything I was and am proud of, my son. 

 

It was easier to write a poem

About the day the storks brought you to this world

(Joking, you are grown up enough to know that these were no storks).

There was a movie back then with James Belushi.

Now, I follow Godzilla knowing you like these fantastic movies,

I have no idea what the plot is about, but it seems that the world is endangered.

Godzilla will solve it, no doubt about that whatsoever!

 

You did not answer my mail,

But your mother says that you have a nice time,

Delighted with everything you see at the boarding school.

You had breakfast, pasta for lunch and chicken for supper.

 

And it is immediately easier for me,

This is the world where you would like to be.

I know, you will be thrilled with girls from Lebanon, Germany, Japan...

You'll respect traditions and beliefs of other teenagers. This is how you were raised.

I know you... Let it be! Live your youth, it has to be dignified, worth of you and your values that only a parent could know.

 

And you know the road back home, if anything, God forbid, goes the wrong way.

In the eyes of your parents, you will have the same value

As if you became Nobel Prize Winner.

Oh, my dear son, how did you become so grown up so quickly?

 

Translated By Nihad Mešić River

 

Soldiers

 

Under the blue vastness

in the stance "Steady"

they disappear,

people like us,

carved in, for the mosaic

of the gloomy history

of their ancestors,

trained

on their backs

for those who

celebrate the triumphs.

 

Under the flags

of favorite colors,

with eerie sounds

of ceremonial songs

they get lost

in the twilight mist.

 

In a strange cramp

they depart,

happy - to glory,

and others - to death,

to the land

of unfortunate,

to the coast of foreign customs,

into desolation

through which their ghosts

will wander in vain,

and never

any peace for them

until the Sun and the Moon

cease to be.

 

Translated By Haris Bukarić

 

BUKARIĆ ENSAR

 

BUKARIĆ ENSAR was born in Bugojno (1968). He lives and works in Gornji Vakuf - Uskoplje (Bosnia and Herzegovina). He is a graduate mechanical engineer. He is working with many magazines, represented in the collections and anthologies. His works have been published in many countries. "Poetizing the universe" is a collection of poetry that he published together with colleagues Vernesa Manov and Nijaz Rujanac in October 2018. He published an independent collection of poetry for children "Svaštarnica" in 2020. A collection of poetry "My World" is published in 2021, and in 2023, the collection of poetry "One big morning I will". The poetry collection "Inversion" is being prepared. Most of all, he writes short stories and poems, and some of them have been rewarded. Especially he likes to write for children.