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''