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    Immigrant Blues
    Immigrant Blues
    Immigrant Blues
    Ebook115 pages47 minutes

    Immigrant Blues

    By Goran Simic

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    About this ebook

    Immigrant Blues, an extension and deepening of the famous poems of the siege of Sarajevo translated in Simic's Sprinting from the Graveyard (Oxford, 1997), explores the personal and the public devastations of war, especially its effects on the emotions, thoughts and memories of exiled survivors. Simic's genius is to present this disturbing reality in terms so vigorous and humane that pain is mixed with the solace and pleasure of great art.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBrick Books
    Release dateSep 15, 2003
    ISBN9781771313001
    Immigrant Blues
    Author

    Goran Simic

    Goran Simic was born in Bosnia in 1952 and has published eleven volumes of poetry, drama and short fiction; his work has been translated into nine languages and has been published and performed in several European countries. One of the most prominent writers of the former Yugoslavia, Simic was trapped in the siege of Sarajevo. In 1995 he and his family were able to settle in Canada as the result of a Freedom to Write Award from PEN. Immigrant Blues is Simic's second full-length volume of poems in English, and the first to be published in Canada.

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      Book preview

      Immigrant Blues - Goran Simic

      SORROW

      Open the Door

      Open the door, the guests are coming

      some of them burned by sun, some of them pale

      but every one with suitcases made of human skin.

      If you look carefully at the handles, fragile as birds’ spines,

      you will find your own fingerprints, your mother’s tears,

      your grandpa’s sweat.

      The rain just started. The world is grey.

      The guests are coming.

      Some of them happy, some of them strange

      with stomachs already full of strange words

      they have just learned, like river and wheat.

      Instead of food they still eat their own memories.

      And they are not ringing. They just gently knock on your door

      not to disturb your dog still hot for a fight

      with a strange cat that dropped by in the backyard

      from who knows where.

      The rain just started. It looks like snow.

      The guests are in the house.

      Some of them smooth as silk, some shy as a breeze.

      Their fingers are as heavy as jail bars

      while turning the leaves of your family tree.

      And don’t be surprised at hearing your ancestors talk to them

      in some language you forgot a long time ago.

      Even the dust on their shoes strangely recalls the dust

      in your attic.

      It’s cold outside. Cold. Cold.

      The guests are leaving. They say goodnight.

      It’s a long way to the next house, long as from planet to planet.

      Sleeping babies in their arms just got the first lesson:

      how to open the door. The rest they will learn.

      They are leaving silently not to disturb your dog

      watching the strange cat eating his food in the backyard.

      And you are not certain if they are ghosts

      or your own shadow which you left behind

      long ago after you left your home

      to knock on somebody’s door

      on some stormy night.

      Immigrant Talk with Picture Ripped from Porno Magazine

      It’s Sunday, Mary Lou,

      most terrible day of the week when even empty bottles

      look happy keeping company with the spiders under my bed.

      They know nothing about my loneliness

      shaped by wet pillows and crumpled sheets,

      nothing about the emptiness that attacks me

      while watching night programs on TV

      with one hand on a lottery ticket

      and another on the glass.

      It’s Sunday, Mary Lou,

      and I’m already tired talking with ancestors

      hidden in the basket full of my dirty work clothes.

      She’s fake, they tell me every time I kiss your photo.

      As if I don’t know it.

      Your long blond hair is not the same color as your pubic bush

      which obediently lies under somebody’s hand. Like a lamb.

      And your big breasts don’t seem like the place where some baby

      can get some sleep with a drop of milk between its lips.

      Even your phone number

      printed at the bottom of your widely spread legs

      is a fake.

      Or belongs to someone I didn’t need to call.

      My neighbour’s wife, the house next to mine,

      seems happy walking with her kids on Sunday evening

      —she can be seen in the red light district every night.

      Even the tiny woman next door,

      holding hands with her boyfriend who just got out of jail

      says Hello on Sunday.

      And I

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