Vesna Cvjetićanin was born in Yugoslavia in the 1960s and never imagined leaving it. However, in the early 1990s, she found herself moving to Australia with her young family, and has been living in Canberra ever since. A lawyer by profession, and formerly a public servant, Vesna now spends her time working as a mediator and interpreter, writing poetry, running two radio shows on Canberra’s 2XX FM (Mediation Today and Srbija u Mom Srcu [Serbia in my Heart]), and enjoying time with her children and grandchildren – not to mention her dear pup, Rikki the Whippet.
This poem was originally written in Serbian, Vesna’s mother tongue, and is presented in both Serbian and in English. The translation below was kindly provided by Vesna Cvjetićanin and Dunja Kaczmarek.
AN IMMORTAL HUG
I hugged you
And felt our shared past
As it flowed,
In that moment,
From you to me
And from me to you.
Together, we felt the profound stitch of motherlessness
And the pain of loneliness
Borne only by those who are lost.
I felt the dust of my childhood,
Which, unbeknownst to us,
Had for years enshrouded us with the same particles
Of sorrow, joy, oblivion and memory.
You are the daughter of my friend
Who took the path of no return,
And I am part of your inherited past.
The power of survival flowed through
Our bodies as we embraced.
The hug we shared brought us together like a phantom,
Completely imperceptible to others.
And we both felt love –
Towards she who is no more,
And who brought us together,
Unknowingly, and unintentionally,
In the immortal language of the universe.
The first time I met the daughter of my friend Zorica, who once lived on Thessaloniki Combatants Street, once Nikola Zrinjski Street, in Sombor.
ZORICA MALA, Besmrtni zagrljaj
Zagrlila sam te,
I osetila našu zajedničku prošlost
Kako se pretače,
U momentu,
Iz tebe u mene,
I iz mene u tebe.
Osetile smo grč nemanja majki
I bol usamljenosti
Koju samo izgubljeni osećaju.
Osetila sam prašinu detinjstva
Za koju do tada nismo ni znale
Da nas je obe prekrila istim česticama
Tuge, radosti, zaborava i sećanja.
Ti si ćerka moje drugarice
Koja je pošla putem u nepovrat,
A ja sam deo tvoje nasledjene prošlosti.
Prostrujala je snaga preživaljavanja
Izmedju naših tela,
Zagrljaj nas je spojio na fantomski,
Drugima potpuno neprimetan, način.
I mi smo obe osetile ljubav,
Prema onoj koje više nema,
A koja nas je spojila,
Neznavši, i nenamerno,
Nemuštim jezikom svemira.
Kada sam prvi put srela ćerku moje drugarice Zorice, iz ulice Solunskih Boraca, nekada Nikole Zrinjskog, u Somboru.
© Vesna Cvjetićanin, 2023
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