Celestial Hostel

/, Blesok no. 80-81/Celestial Hostel

Celestial Hostel

Canzone and Sirtaki
Brotherhood and Sisterhood
The Girls of My Youth
Flowering Judas Tree in the Courtyard of Old Vienna’s General Hospital, Now The University Campus
My Pub
In Belgrade, Ten Years after the War
Apartment in Paradise
Raspberries

In Penzing by Vienna, I dropped in to the Salonika Greek Restaurant
The owner was a Sarajevo Serb, and when I said who I was,
there was
no shortage of nibbles
On the house were slivovitz, cheese from there and Travnik
We stayed till late at night, until the casual guests
put the tables together
And the sound of sirtaki gave way to Bosnian love songs from smoke
ruined throats
“green leaves deck the upland”

It reminded me of a night like that in Grinsheim by Munich
two or three years ago, when I was a chance customer in the pizzeria
Casa Leone, the owner, a Croat from the Sava valley. The staff of the joint
were also Croats, refugees from Bosnia,
save for the cook, Italian, who gave a false ID
to the Italian dishes. Late at night,
the owner’s wife switched off Modugno and started
Omer Beg, her body writhing to the rhythm of the belly dance

At that time, and now too, Bosnia had its bellum omnium in omnes
with concentration camps and mass deportations
War of waiter versus waiter, I thought
Of these poor swine who will for ever and ever bear their cross

Pointlessly perishing for this superfluous land
and then leaving it for ever, in some European dump opening up
Greek and Italian restaurants and in them in the small hour singing
their plaintive Oriental songs

AuthorMile Stojić
2018-08-21T17:22:51+00:00 December 29th, 2011|Categories: Poetry, Blesok no. 80-81|0 Comments