The Poem

In 1967 my father wrote a poem to my mother from a prison cell.

In 1982 I found it in an attic, read it once, and memorised it, because I understood I would not be allowed to keep it. 

That same evening I copied it into my own notebook and hid it at my grandmother’s house — she could not read, so nothing there could be searched.

The original is gone. I renounced it in a courthouse in 2013 without knowing what was on the list.

This is the only surviving copy, and it is in my handwriting.

"Kako je lepo

kad te u osmeh uvijem

i kroz rosu gledam.

Kad čujemo ovde, onde

akorde spletenih prstiju.

I svaki novi dan sa tobom,

kad jutro noćne senke

sunčevom lepezom briše.

Kako je lepo s’ tobom

na pučini ljubavi."

How lovely it is

when I wrap you in a smile

and look at you through the dew.

When we hear, here and there,

the chords of our fingers laced together.

And every new day with you,

when the morning sweeps the night’s shadows away

with a fan made of sun.

How lovely it is, with you,

out on the open sea of love.

He was twenty-one, and he was in prison for causing a death, and he wrote that.