Poets and Other Poems

By Jasna Gugić

Translated by Anita Vidakovic Ninkovic

Poets

Where are you, Poets,
You, Wizards? 
Let us paint with our poem
This sorrowful world
And people with masks,
For behind the mask
Even eyes are lackluster
And we no longer breathe. 
Let us raise voice
And scrape the mud from our soles.
Let us raise voice
For all of those silent in their homes
And isolated,
Immersed in the misery
Of everyday boring jobs. 
Let us cloak with our imagination
This programmed world
And keep the scent of childhood
And first kisses
Alive.
Let us bring back love,
That divine joy of life.
Let us pour it over from our poems,
May it flow down the streets
Worldwide
And may it touch
Every solitary man in tears
And women wearing black. 

Silence

Silence in me
strikes in lightnings
of the sky, too gray
and destroys my accumulated
fear in the years
of non-belonging.
Silence in you
does not know my fears
and gets lost in the words
of unknown people
whose hands cannot
touch the softness
of our hearts.
Don’t let me stay silent
because my love is
louder than your smile.
The loudest one.

Life

This life is
soaked with tears
and the words are too small
to pronounce
all life in an instant
and my love
hidden in the corners of solitude.

This life is
soaked with tears
and the pain of the past
is stronger
than the impending ecstasy
in the kiss of the night
and my escape is stronger
than the strength of your will.
This life is
soaked with tears
and the joy gets crushed
by the sorrow of the
desperate and disbelief in a
new longing.
This life is
soaked with tears
but today there is a smile
in my eyes
so don’t walk away
from my smile.
Don’t let the grief
to put out these embers
at least sometimes
when I forget
that this life is soaked with tears.

Hope

I would like to take
the paths of new hope
and erase my footprints behind
me because your escort is
superfluous before the rising sun.
I would like to walk
the land of solitude
for years
and walk on
the silence of the
pathlessness liberated
of all your words and
deeds. I would like to be
born again
bathed in purity
of my soul
and stand
in front of the starry sky
as a newborn.
And pardon
my rude words
and be patient
because my loneliness
is your loneliness, too.
You are my other self.
You do what I am afraid of.

Jasna Gugić is the Vice-President for public relations of the Association of Artists and Writers of the World SAPS; She is a co-editor of the anthology, Compassion—Save the World, one poem written by 130 world poets. Jasna is a multiple winner of many international awards for poetry and literature, and her work has been translated into several world languages. Her first independent collection of poetry was published in 2021, a bilingual English-Croatian edition, entitled Song of Silence. She lives and works in Zagreb, Croatia.