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Quiet Flows the Una
really couldn’t tell which
leaves were the tree’s and
which belonged to the velvety
creeper. I would climb up into
that crown, to where it was
quiet and peaceful inside. The
darkness there was my ally,
while the main thoroughfare
of Marshal Tito Street ran
below it, full of comings and
goings: people, cars, horse-
drawn carts, ambulances,
stooped peasant women...
But there were also upright
ones carrying heavy loads
on their heads; women
whose necks were surely
able to carry whole slabs
of the world, chunks their
households rested on. Old
men passed by too, bitterly
spitting out something akin
to the acrimony of their lives.
Everything was in motion:
lines of lizards, ants and red-
black beetles, columns of
cattle, sheep from the high
pastures of the Grmeč range,
nomadic shepherds in fur
hats like those of Cossacks,
the blind and the drunk,
children and youth, workers
who were also drunkards,
and torrents of people who
knew nothing and expected
nothing, because no one
could see the future. It was
guaranteed by the weight of
the big stone letters up on
Tećija Hill that spelled the
name of the greatest son of
all the Yugoslav peoples.
Up in the tree, in the peace
and quiet, I was perfectly
invisible. I didn’t exist. I
could even close my eyes
and the world would become
insignificant. I would be all
by myself, a small light in the
darkness, before the storm
blowing in from Grmeč. One
body, nothing more, that
shiveredwith cold as the wind
rushed through the green