On Seeing a Photograph of Affan Ramic's Dead Son
Published 24 May 1999
"All these moments will be lost in time like tears in rain" -
from "Blade Runner"
A new studio. And new work too, light and airy,
After the charred objet trouve cross-beams and fiery black conflagrations
Of the siege pieces. A bridge, all creams and whites,
Ultramarine for the Neretva, a touch of terracotta.
At the table, jokingly, he tosses each of us an egg -
Unknown hardboiled. When he opens a new monograph
He's a small prewar boy with his parents, then with a small boy
In summer shorts, aged five forever. As he thumbs on
I am still back with it - or rather, with the face transmogrified
To my own son's. When I mention how sad it is
An eye-rim glistens like must on a summer grape.
A brush on the shoulder. Nothing more. We move on . . .
Sarajevo outskirts. Leaving again. Past Ilidza -
Its old Austrian tram sign in Roman and Cyrillic - lush midsummer
Bosnian verdure. O radiant day
Booming like the pink-bloomed light
Outside the flytrap window screen of my grandmother's death-room!
Haycocks, maize, woodpiles, ruins, lavender;
Orchards, hill-meadows, an aqueduct, kiosks, turban-stones.
Jars of honey at roadside stalls. Blaze of alpine buttercup. How to bear up,
How go on, when the world's refracted to a single tear?
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