SITNA PTICA

english dialogue list

for the prince,

the lion man

and the invisible worm

TINY BIRD

I woke up during the night.

I was going to take the early train in few hours.

In the apartment where I grew up,

there is the shoebox

filled with papers, drawings,

school documents and notebooks.

My father had kept this box in the cupboard

hidden behind his clothes,

his military uniform and his gun.

These things remained from his years before

he was about to become The People's Army officer,

from years he spent away from his home,

in one of the capitals of SFR Yugoslavia.

In the days after he died, I searched through the box.

The train was going to lead me

to one of the names found in it.

Still, I had to wait for the hours to pass.

I couldn't go back to sleep

and I took a walk in the nearby forest.

There are many paths in this forest.

While walking across paths, in the dark,

I imagined myself in the train,

flipping through the pages of books

I had planned to carry with me.

I saw myself failing to choose

between looking at the pages

and looking through the window.

The first path.

'' ''Covered in their magic

like a cast shadow,

they appear black.

They follow each other,

one by one,

through the highlands,

breaking

through the vines.

It is the only link to the infinite

branches

which murmur

up to the sky.

Their feet also do not know

the land,

only the ferns.

They die as such,

with their arms tangled

in the vines.''

Then,

with the same whimpering voice,

they sing again,

paddling:

''Aude sa na

Me Auide, o'i Audie,

o nareble, iha blama

ma ikel makuja Me!''

What does their song mean?

I asked the young man.

In his words,

there was no laughter,

nor was it in their song,

when he explained:

''They say

that when the girl Me

died,

and her fiancee saw

them take her away,

he cried

out to her

throughout the night:

Yes, yes, Auide, Auide,

you are leaving

and I cannot see anymore,

as I could before,

your buttocks from afar!

I laughed with joy,

for this was the example

of how a single

poetic idea

can be manifested

differently in white

and

differently in black;

and I was sad,

for it was difficult to read

what these words

I wrote down actually mean.

Who knows

the amount and the kind of strains

with which they articulated

that which I suggested them

to sing earlier.

''Aude, sa na Me Auide,

o'narbele, iha blama, ma...''

Before dawn,

I felt a great cold

and could barely breathe

due to the descending fog.''

''She was shot in 1943.

She was hanged in 1943.

She was shot in 1944.

She was shot in 1942.''

In father's university transcripts, I found a name

of his professor from the Military Academy

who in 1976. taught

''An Introduction to Marxist Sociology''.

In the internet telephone directory,

I found the address and phone number of the professor

who now lives on the coast.

I visited him and asked:

''What is friendship?''

This is what I heard.

''There is

no violence

in military.

That would constitute a crime,

villainy.

This is a trade,

a military trade, which is specific

in that it deals with the means

of death and killing.

A trade

defined by the goal of war.

In war,

there exists a conflict

between enemy forces.

The means of force through which

the enemy is being forced

to accept my interests,

my attitudes,

my values.

To subdue

his own will to mine.

Force is the means

to an end.

Force is

not violence.

Violence

exists in war crimes.

Revolution is a sudden,

violent,

deep-rooted change

of everything.

What became implemented

was the dictatorship of the proletariat,

the ideological police,

indoctrination and socialization

constructed by

values of the revolution.

This made them

unable to accept

the changes following

the fall of the Berlin Wall

and the collapse

of all totalitarian regimes.

Revolutionary statism is dictatorship.

Self-managing socialism is anarchy.

Revolution is rooted

in the psychology of the masses.

The masses

are the ones that

generate the revolution.

Look at the French Revolution,

it was a mass guillotine.

Every revolution

carries with itself

the dangers of terror.

During

the communist revolutions,

the Communists sacrificed

others' lives for their own

ideals.

The nation as a subject

cannot be substituted.

A nation is

no limit.

The soldier

ceases to be

the enemy

the moment he stops taking part

in a battle.

When he lays down his weapons.

When he gives up the fight,

he no longer is an enemy.

The army does not exclude

the human dimension,

especially in the times

of war.

This is where

military solidarity

comes through.

This is friendship.

My life depends on yours.

If I am a friend,

I will help you.

I will drag you

if you are wounded.

There also exists

military comradeship

which is built upon the very essence

of the military trade,

and

that is war,

that is killing.''

The second path.

Before the bulldozers

have dug out the canal,

men would meet each other

here at night.

After dusk,

they would

walk slowly

down the path,

stare at one another

and seek consent.

Then

they would go in the bushes

and one

would lean

against a tree.

On the bridge,

in the dark,

you could see one male body

against the fence

and a few others

approaching him from behind

and embracing

him,

one by one.

When

they finish the canal

and create a path,

when

they set electric poles

and turn on all the lights,

where

will the darkness

go?

Where

will the birds

go?

''On the sad

station platform,

if one day life

separates us

or if your

heart wanders,

mine

will fall to pieces.

There will always be

that tune

forever

deep inside me

for that tune

will forever

tell me about

you and me.''

''oh

friendly light

oh

fresh source

of light

those

who invented neither powder

nor compass

those

who could harness neither steam

nor electricity

those

who explored neither

the seas nor the sky

but those

without whom

the earth would not be

the earth''