Poetry is healing, aggressive, and ambitious. It is not satisfied with anything created in space and time. Not even with the ideas of the wise, the destructions of the ungracious, or with the contours of the beginning and the end in the theory of relativity. Regardless of its outer form, physiognomy, obvious goal and imagery, the poetic creation is a very wide and deep world that readers can see with their eyes, hear its sounds with their ears; however, they can discover it in a much more complex manner only with their mind. The poetic creation is not a framed picture. It is alive. It is the world in which time pulsates and spaces change. It can fulfill the everlasting, hushed human desire for eternity. A poem should be looked at from the outside, as a woman: looked at for a long time and with all senses, but only as long as it takes the reader to find on its surface the passages into the world for which the poem is an opening to an ever new and rich life. A poem usually has many such opening and all depends on readers (travelers, researchers) and on what way they discover it and through which one they squeeze into that world. It also depends on through which passage they enter into the poet’s mind and feelings, and how courageously and skillfully they travel that mind and those feelings, through always-new times, spaces, and relations. That journey does not have an end because the poet’s mind is only one of the passages into the richness of the worlds touched by the poet, no matter whether he traveled the roads of reality or of imagination.
The opening on the outer form of the poem can be no more than one word (stećak – a medieval Bosnian tomb-stone) or a poetic image (or as when in the heart of a harbor / in the sails of sleeping vessels / a sudden wave brings about / thirst for running / dance on water), or a sound (in the mystical sound of brass, the past awakens me), a smell (this morning the smells in cafés awakened), a feeling (words feel miserable), or only one recorded ticking of time … Sometimes the poet’s world is so hermetical that the reader needs an extraordinary amount of energy to pass through the current of life which one writing in that world pours into his poem. Almost the same amount of energy would be needed to pass through a black hole in the galaxy against its enormous gravitational force, and continue a voyage across the rich world of the universe. While one analyzes a poem, it is enough to discover only one of the convenient passages into the poet’s mind and then move within it in a desired manner and as far as an individual reader needs.
That much I think about the writing of poetry. Whatever you find in my poems, it will have been made in this way, as coal and oil have been made by the Earth’s heat and pressure, and perhaps as the fire in the heart of the sun has been made by cosmic fusion.
First Part
MAN IS THE MEASURE OF ALL THINGS
I am not sure what happened first: Greek democracy or Protagoras. I would not say that it does not matter. I am more likely to assume that with the Greek statesmen the conditions for the birth of democracy were ripening, and then Protagoras came with his proverb Man is the measure of all things. He only philosophically shaped into a proverb the intention of the society of that time. And then the proverb was accepted by sophists, the ideologists of the slave-owning democracy, who went through towns and villages teaching people the simple ideology that places people on the pedestal of all values. Two and a half millennia from then, nowadays, the sophists do not tread the roads of our world. Above man we put profit, the bleakest cause of the exploitation of man and the satanic child of the greatest machinations. Instead of the slave-owing democracy of Protagoras’ time, we have imperialistic democracy ruling the societies of our civilization. The former had a lot inhumanity in itself and was only for free people, but the latter is not much better. However, the former is twenty five centuries old; ours warns that we have not much moved from the beginning.
To me democracy has always been peace and flocks of white doves soaring above stadiums and the world’s harbors. Maybe my sight has been cloned, so I do not see anymore as a common human being would; instead of white doves flying from one part of the Earth to another with the messages of peace, I more and more see black warships lining the world’s harbors.
I was born in the first year of peace after World War II. As soon as I was able to understand what war among people means, I wondered why people go to war. Why does someone fight who could achieve divine values in peace? As soon as I became aware of the danger that is the destiny of human society, my spirit held tightly onto that which gave me hope. Tito became the symbol of my hope in the country where they bore me without asking where I wanted to be born. And in that big mysterious world beyond the border of my country, my hope became America, from the moment when we at our homes started having flour, dry cod, butter, cheese, powdered eggs … from generous Truman’s help; and when our teacher Maria in the second grade of the elementary school explained that the pillars of all people’s happiness were America and Russia.
The world was showing itself to me as fast as time was passing. I was happy, though more hungry than fed, because my imagination was carrying me into the time of peace and prosperity. I dreamed of how I would build a nice house and how I would be opening its gate from the distance of a hundred meters, without meddling with alchemy and without somebody burning and destroying it in my lifetime. And I dreamed of how I would travel around the world: one month to be a Japanese, the other a Swede or a Canadian, Russian, Congolese … And I wrote poems about people and nature. And then life started becoming corrupted. My first confusion happened when one night my mother told me that her father and my grandfather, Medan Medic, had been killed by Tito’s partisans in 1942, in Bihac, in Bosnia, because he had been a forest ranger and would punish some partisans for illegally pillaging the forest. Then I was astonished when in grade seven a history teacher nicknamed Shampoleon , without any fear in his voice, explained that in the history of the world the greatest crime in the smallest unit of time had been the American attack on Hiroshima and Nagasaki with atomic bombs. The greatest number of people were killed in the shortest period of time since the beginning of all wars. The killing of innocent men, women, children, the old, the disabled … For that reason my two great hopes became less great and encircled with doubt.
I am not any longer at the age when my human spirit can be satisfied with hope. Maybe I have matured more then I should. I am also above cursing those who brought me the evil, and who continue to bring evil to humanity. I do not believe in the time of punishment. I have always loved life and looked for ways to catch all opportunities waiting for me. I believe that it is every person’s need and that everybody’s intellect drives humanity to look for happiness. That is why I have decided to square accounts with my two hopes and try to find out if I was too hasty in my rejection.
Tito was not easy to find. After his death, the Yugoslavian people drowned him in a sea of tears, and every person at his funeral took a part of that famous man. It was not easy for me. There was need to unify the millions of Tito’s particles, which Yugoslavians had carried with them, swearing they were all Tito; and also to unify those particles that the representatives of 123 other nations had carried home to their countries. Among them were 32 presidents, 22 prime ministers, 4 kings – participants at the most famous funeral in the history of our civilization. I even stole something of Tito from Mrs. Lillian, the mother of then-president of the United States, Jimmy Carter, who had sent her as his representative to Tito’s funeral. Having done all this, I attacked Tito right away, provoking him openly, as if one’s mother has left him, and when he finds her, he starts tearing at her clothes:
You succeeded in becoming an idol and in moving the masses to follow you, ordering them to do what you wanted them to do because you were the master of music before today’s showbiz musicians were. You did the same as they do at the onset of the third millennium: move the masses at stadiums, plazas and halls, ordering the audience to sing the arias from their albums. And then in the masses’ ovations all those ugly things that could be attributed to a human being disappear, for human society is dest
ined to march following leaders. It is easier to justify the marching if masses follow the one who was the last of the great men from World War II, the one who prevailed in Hitler’s and Stalin’s attacks, the one who, during the animosities of the Cold War, was building bridges of friendship among nations, who was one of the founders of the Movement of Nonaligned Nations, dulling the blades of the two powerful, confronted blocks in the world of that time. Even when they, as Fitzroy MacLean wrote, follow one who is energetic, adroit, decisive, tireless; who is not an ascetic, fanatic ideologist nor a bureaucratic dogmatist, but one who is a hedonist, the boss not the subordinate; one who is extremely broad minded, with a sense of humor and open affection for small things, possessing natural shyness, a female temperament in bursts of anger, consideration and nobility. In reality, you were not a communist. Instead you played in the political life as in film. I do not blame you because masses followed you blindly. It is not your drawback but only the basic characteristic of masses. Customs and ideas are the work of an infinitesimally small minority of people, while masses are always similar in their ignorance, ready to accept everything, even lies, cruel when they have a chance, selfish and narrow-minded. They forgive you for the crimes of your freedom fighters, merciless killing and persecution of Chetniks, Ljotics, Ustashas, and of your other enemies who refused to surrender. Then, Goli Island, a cruel prison for your collaborators who stayed faithful to Stalin.
T I T O: It is easy to be smart when time shows you what is smart! It is easy to mock my mistakes and the falls I took while I was walking through a thicket full of holes and traps, and you are sitting on a hill and looking at my failures. It is easy to blame me for broken branches in the thicket through which I was rushing. I was not Mahatma Gandhi during the first phase of the path along which I was leading the Yugoslavian people. I said “Better the graveyard than slavery” because the latter meant collaboration with the blackest ideology of the world. Not because I liked war. I have always been against war. Our crimes at the end of the war? By that rule, every court that condemns a criminal would also be criminal. What do you think, how many enemies, and many more innocent people, the Americans, British, and Russians killed while liberating Europe from the Nazis and Fascists?
With regard to Goli Island, it was my fault. We were precipitate in solving the problem we faced after refusing Stalin’s baton, and we tried to isolate all those who had not understood the meaning of our “NO”. We did not have Siberia, nor were we at such a level of democracy that we could neutralize interior enemies who could easily have triggered a civil war and enabled a Soviet intervention. Goli Island was similar to the present American use of Guantanamo Bay, but it very quickly stopped being a prison because I understood it was our historical minus.
Communist? I first heard that idea from our village priest, and I was drawn to it during the very dark time of the twentieth century when inhumane, nationalistic regimes were spreading death around the world. Stalin and his satellites, Chinese leaders, and even some well known Western politicians and philosophers took away from me my attribute of “communist”.
You left sharp blades in the relationships among the Yugoslavian nations, who spilt blood after you were gone, and you did not revise religions in a manner that would forever give people pause in their relations with God and prevent them from placing religion above all other human relationships.
T I T O: If a swarm of bees fell into your lap, it would be hard for you to turn them into insects without dangerous stingers. It takes a long time to affect their behavior because nation and religion are imbedded deep in human genes. They have existed for thousands of years. They are almost instinctive reactions of the human spirit. I encouraged love among people, their mixing in order to dull the blades of nationalism and religion. I advocated equality and brotherhood where one’s nationality would be only a statistic, rather than a motivation for mobilizations. It is the same with religious institutions. A motivation for people should be their spiritual and economic progress.
Your maxims on relations among people live after your death. Nowadays, the Dalai Lama, Desmond Tutu and others are using them. The maxim “Guard brotherhood and unity like the apple of your eye”, addressed to the part of civilization where you ruled, is not new. It has been known in history. Mahatma Gandhi spoke in a similar manner. Winston Churchill stumbled upon it too. Many rulers preached the unity of their people. You did it very successfully. In the structure of your state mechanism, besides the fatherly treatment, it was not difficult to find dictatorship and force, as well as serious and severe consequences if one dared to have a different opinion. It is hard to judge whether you, with the help of the maxim, ruled over the Yugoslavian people and their religions, or whether you forced that idea into the brains of your followers in order to control them more easily. Maybe you did not really care if it was hypocrisy and how much of it would go into the genes of the future generations. But I like your idea because it helps the survival of the whole as well as of the qualitative differences. It is the escape from unitarization. Similar is the Canadian concept of multiculturalism and especially the concept of the creation of United Europe.
T I T O: What would happen if all the flowers in a field had the same color? Or the same shape? To say the least, insects would be confused. There have been attempts to forget our historical quarrels through unitarization. But it is wrong. Why should we all have the same name? It is important that a different name does not bother anybody. It is important to build different values in life. It is important that our first concern be man, every human being and their happiness. My idea of the path for the future was not to allow the diversification of interests, and not to favor the general over the personal, but to globalize and at the same time preserve national values that are everybody’s values. To enable and force crossbreeding, by combining what is good in one identity with what is good in another and prevent incestuous degenerations. To combine the smart and the economically potent in order to become competitive in the world. So, united and powerful, we were not afraid of seeking other possibilities for unification in the world, in the world’s division of labor. In that case you do not feel like a minority, you are not afraid that the others will swallow you. You can open borders and mix with others because your contribution in the world’s genetics will be indestructible.
And dictatorship? In the world, they call you a humane dictator. A dictator is a dictator. Your election system was guided and limited.
T I T O: You can not force truths upon history. I was a sort of dictator, but at the time when it was needed. Don’t young fruit trees need strong support in the form of wooden sticks firmly put in the ground to protect the trees from strong winds?! Especially when a wind has the intention to destroy them. Later we democratized the way we thought was good. Gradually. Isn’t the concept of self-governed socialism an exceptional form of democracy? It is not my fault that people saw me as the father of the nation and gave me the eternal throne, or better a sofa, on some hill from where I can see them all. But they can see me, too. As far as I know, they wanted me to be with them forever.
Another maxim of yours was accepted by many all over the world: “The peoples of the world need to build their relationships on the principles of peaceful coexistence.” You and your friends Nehru and Nasser based your Movement of Nonaligned Nations on that principle. I believe you had in mind the protection of the weaker from the stronger and the more aggressive. In the world’s social and economic processes, you wanted to ensure the confrontation of different ideas and to enable a spontaneous competition, and to leave it to the spectators to choose their favorites. However, isn’t it at the same time giving a hand to those who exploit and suppress others? For peaceful coexistence knows all forms of state apparatus and types of government. And some kind of closed borders. Does it mean that internationalization, which means putting pressure on evil governments, would only stay at the level of verbal confrontation of ideas and philosophies? Would it mean freezi
ng of the state of affairs in the world and choosing the path that would, in the third millennium, enable the domination of strict borders and god-given systems, regardless of what is within these borders? Is it the demand that everybody do his own business, his family affairs, without any regard for what is happening in other houses? Or does it mean that today Bush’s Administration in America needs to be prevented from destroying and conquering other regions and people, under the pretext of enforcing democracy? Or that we should wait indefinitely until, in the countries governed by evil governments, the time ripens when positive forces will be able to destroy their own evil? What is AB OVO? If an egg did not have fertilizer, would life be possible? Have you ever thought that coexistence could simply be tolerance and that it could stop the cloning of life in the third millennium?
T I T O: Hadrian did not accept Christianity because he preferred the diversity of life with different gods that were similar to humans. The domination of one is a dogma, especially when that dominance is enforced from the outside, and even worse, by war, killings, and destruction. Those are paths creating hatred. People should respect and help each other so they can live more easily and rely on one another. One’s dignity should mean a lot to others. Peaceful coexistence is an extraordinary recipe for uniting humanity. It is the only way for people to stop thinking about war, regardless if it is a war to conquer or defend. One whose doctrine is war arms oneself, and no weapon in history has ever been left unused. It has always been used against people. Peaceful coexistence offers us love, mutual respect and freedom from interference. When you get rid of hatred, you will get rid of the basic problems that make people confront each other: religion, nation, race … It is an extraordinary recipe for the honorable integration of the world. Wars will never integrate the world because they encourage destructive instincts, both in victims and in predators.
Footprints Page 2