Tourists do not venture

For today’s National Poetry Month poem, we’re going to Bosnia and Herzegovina, where Adisa Bašić is a professor of literature and creative writing at the Sarajevo Faculty of Philosophy. She was born in 1979 and lived through the Siege of Sarajevo, from April 1992 to February 1996.

The neighborhood she’s writing about here was constructed in the 1970s. Like the rest of the city, it suffered death and destruction from Serbian airstrikes and bombardments. Which—if tourists came to the area, they’d probably see. But, as she notes, they don’t.

Alipašino

We’re the kids from the neighborhood
that will never end up
on postcards.
To our parts tourists do not venture.
We don’t win presidential elections in a run-off.
And no language do we speak better than our mother tongue.
We do not know that our twin brothers live
in all of the cities of the world.
To our parts tourists do not venture.
There is nothing well known here:
an elementary school,
a supermarket, and an old walnut tree long cut down.
To our parts tourists do not venture.
And we have nothing to show them.
Except ourselves.

                                Translated by Una Tanoviĉ  

 

 

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