I know that girl, it’s Ada at the wheel.
Darko puts his hand on her thigh.
She’s wearing a dress she bought in Novi Sad,
high heel shoes for the coffin.
She steps on the gas.
I asked the devil to give me this night,
we’re using each other, we’re screaming and fighting.
Two days home from the front and I was late tonight,
there was snow on the road but that’s not it;
like a pair of scissors, sharp and bright,
say what you like: I am faithful, I am drunk,
I’m aiming for the moon, I want to kill it.
There’s blood on the snow.
I can feel the Drina flowing through my skull.
We’re screaming. We’re shouting.
My father would never do that. It’s not true.
When the Sultan died, the vizier
put the body on ice and the eunuch was sworn to silence
but the smell filled up the palace,
scented candles made no difference.
For once Bakic didn’t know what to do.
It was months before they told her
what happened to Darko.
Her father said he was going to turn up alive —
that was a lie.
Soon after, she took the gun he’d been given as a prize,
the best cadet, ready to fight for the homeland,
ready to fight for the Krajina, the gun he was going to fire
for the birth of his grandchild.
He kisses the coffin:
My little girl, what have you done?
Who do you think you are, god’s widow?
In the absence of noon, he prayed through the summer.
A black cat. A white cat. Sleeping on the marble.
Day after day, he pleaded, he bullied his god,
he bribed him, just as he’d bribe a politician —
until she finally showed up, weak and dishevelled.
By the time he was standing on the hills over Potočari
she’d been his closest advisor for almost a year.
She was putting on weight in heaven.
Looking down on the walls of the city, she whispered in his ear:
Burn them father;
burn them all and we’ll build a church on the ashes.
The sun will pass through the stained-glass windows.
We’ll call it St. Nepo’s.
I’m brushing against the walls of the Nappstraumtunnel
I’m picking up pollen to bring to the world above,
the stamen, the pistil, the carpel,
the walls weep and bulge,
I’m walking towards the light,
the tunnel is rising.
At the mouth of the O,
I breath the air of a new island.
Flakstadøya. 4 PM.
Laurence O’Dwyer | Cnut the Dane
Contents | Mudlark No. 75 (2023)