Maria Deyana: Don't Touch My Homeland

NE DIRAJTE ZEMLJU MOJU

Don't touch my homeland, the lake of my tears
not graves, not doorstep you spit on,
the clay is full of dead bodies.

Don't dishonour my ancestral land
like vultures you grab someone's eyes,
you too were fed from these breasts.

Don't toss your arrows,
don't darken my father's names,
don't break the white dove's wing,
peonies grew from her wounds.

To stop what was meant to be,
how many of your rules it takes
oh you, far-away justice of God's court?

The old monarch beats stronger in the church's bell,
with a sickle he mows the poisoned seeds which grow,
here he talks and cries in the darkness.

The exhausted land shivers in agony,
won't let the bitter absinth to grow
it curses and sprouts and is ashamed of you.

Don't touch my homeland, my chancels
don't point your fingers in God's altar.

Like the stars lifted up from ashes
our burned out eyes will light the skies again,
here's where children pray are Christened
moan and pray Our Father.

For ages my prophets expand the incense here
for stabbed cord and saint bones,
and my land, now you're a deep crypt.

They don't know what they're doing, You forgive them
warmth and tear from my eye.

Don't touch my homeland!
Stop, Imperial's Galleons 
Everywhere around me war, death and blood

This morning in Lebanon …

I'm not crying with only one tear,
or hurt with only one wound,

I cry with tears of all mothers on this miserable world,
for everyone in the world I pray today

Where are you sailing, Imperial's galleons? Where?
Stop! Around me cells and slaves.

In whose glory are javelins upraised? And everywhere
war and blood, dead children and graves

The moon mows with his sharp sickle. In the dark
there are rots and mould. Trembled night moans.

The whole world is just a deep wound. And in silence
there waits and yawns an empty hole

And everything is dying. Pregnant land wantons.

And saint, broken arms of Allah
on people's last caterwaul
effuse the heaven's dust
Lost mornings read Sabbath.

In Golgotha people kneels down in front of Christ,
yesterday and today and new day tomorrow died,
doesn't the same tear hurt us?

Everywhere around me cells and slaves.

Stop Imperial's galleons! The last thorn is playing.

Everywhere around me dead children and graves,
while I moan: Peace, peace, peace...

Dragica RAJČIC

Dragica Rajcic (poet, journalist, playwright; Switzerland) was born in Croatia and emigrated to Switzerland in 1978; returning in1988, she fled back to Switzerland in 1991.  A founder of Glas Kastela, a newspaper in Croatia, Rajcic has also published five books of poems, including Post Bellum (2000) and Buch von Glück (2004), and two plays:  [‘A Bit of Cleanliness’]  has been performed in Germany and Switzerland.  Her literary awards include the Chamisso Scholarship and the Meran Poetry Prize.

Zürich 1 29th 

September 2001

World crash America 
Newspaper letters 
No asylum for eyes
Eat me drink me ask me say 
nothing look across come closer 
So too and ever more every word 
from your mouth will end never heard 
in those eyes bright dark and still more 
I see across to the wall to the table so easily 
happy so unhappy cannot eat 
and just like that from now on what about 
everything that was never touched like this

Who can tell me today 
What did we talk about 
Two starry hours 
central European time

The war has ended. 
The brother develops 
Pictures in the dark. 
The brother teaches the dog who escaped 
to lose its fear
The mother awakens in the night 
frightened in silence

The father sells stories 
from yesterday and today 
rich in victory.

the women have no‐one to wait for

The son plays hands up. 
The daughter wraps up a stone 
and in case it gets sad 
she draws it a tear.


Expulsion

my brother soldier found 
the broken photo of his friend in the bedroom 
and later 
while shooting hid 
his eyes in his trouser pocket.

what one deserves

love 
child 
house 
dog 
tree 
sun 
rain 
grave

love above the grave 
child in the rain 
dog in the sun 
house without tree 
the grave
empty.