Translated by: Dijana Komlenac. Proofread by Bela Gligorova and Eric Davis.
While the others set off to an amusement park,
We went to the cemeery.
It was on Good Friday, 2002.
Wandering through the alleys of the dead,
In search of the final resting places
Of the people we had never met
But yet knew (about),
We passed by the bones of one-time
Paris heroes, men-of-letters, painters,
Presidents, sinners, and righteous people
And just like the occupants whose bones they interred,
The graves stood in great diversity:
Marble ones, white-washed, bright, flaunting extravagance, obscure,
Plain and sculpture-like.
I thought to myself: Could this be some kind of morbid
Tourism featuring dead people?
I don’t know and cannot say.
Yet, amidst this eternal placidity
We beheld a real funeral
At which no one cried,
The deceased was not bewailed,
No woman shed a tear, no dog barked, nothing,
Only silent pain
Buried and unmourned after,
There he lies in his pit,
There at Pere Lachaise,
The cemetery of the glorious
In Paris