My pub is empty. One rundown house
at the end of the village, with a window on the moonlight.
Here alone I keep refilling my glass and drink until dawn,
and call for my loved ones, absent in my solitary wine.
And suddenly I hear voices, bass and accordion.
Everything that the soul could say, but didn’t know or dared
now meets together, word by word, into gloomy chronicles
and love finishes even before it even started.
My pub is empty. Only a rickety table and chair remains
in the place where long ago carefree coachman of eternity sat,
the one who flew kites and pushed a baby carriage
into the heights of joy, into the horizon where my soul
connects with the blue sky, my heart with the homeland.
Human evil is enormous, the poor little bird of love trembles
and I am giving all my best to keep it untouchable,
the thing that only remains.
My pub is empty. Scent of lavender and forest
are incense to the soul of those whose laugh was smothered.
They laugh above the labyrinth and the dust on my road
because they don’t understand fear, nor why to be cautious.
How will I recognize a face in this heavenly abundance
lying at the edge of a poor Herzegovina village?
I want to love you in a vineyard, in honey, in the fields of wild herbs.
But love ends before it even began.