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Morton Marcus: He said: He left behind his words lovelier than the world, no one dares look at them. They wait at the corners of time bigger than people who can pronounce them. They lie on the dumb earth,

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heavier than life's bones. Death could not carry them away as his dowery. No one can lift them. No one can strike them down. Falling stars hide their heads in the shadows of his words. He said:

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Finally the hands clutch the belly, so the belly won't burst from laughing. But there is no belly there. One hand can hardly rise to wipe the cold sweat from the forehead. There is no forehead either. The other hand reaches for the heart so the

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heart won't jump out of the chest. There is no heart either. Both hands fall, they fall idly into the lap. There is no lap either. On one hand now, the rain is falling, out of the other grass grows. What more can I say?

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Good evening everybody, this is Mort Marcus. And tonight a sad and yet a joyous show because we are celebrating the poetry of Vasko Popa, we've done that once or twice before. But tonight we do it for a very sad reason on Friday, January 4th, of this

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year Vasko Popa at the age of sixty-eight, died. He's certainly one of the great poets of the [cut-off]. Serbian and Vasko Popa was born in 1922. He was educated at various universities in Vienna, and thereabouts. When he was only

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nineteen years old, he was caught in World War Two with the invasion of first the Italians and then the Nazis. He actually spent time in a concentration camp. He and the other Serbian prisoners broke out, and with them he went into the mountains

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with Tito and became a partisan. After the war, he continued his education and became, within ten years, one of the well-known and finally, maybe the greatest of all Serbo-Croat poets. His work when he died had been translated in more than ninety languages.

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His poems are unique. He writes poems almost mathematically. His wife is a- was a mathematician, and he would write poems in, how shall I say this, he would write poems in sequences of seven to thirteen poems usually, and then put them in books, let's say one

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book, all seven poems are in- there are seven sequences of seven poems per sequence, and the first three poems are all introductory to the material. The fourth begins to change the whole direction, and the last three, which equals another

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seven, totally take the sequence in another direction. These sequences allow him to look at a subject from a whole lot of different perspectives. The subject usually is the most common place of all matters such as a bar of soap, a pair of

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pliers, a hammer, instead of people usually parts of people's bodies, so that you you think you're in a dream but a dream that has strange significance. And it seems as though what you're really seeing is a world that has gone crazy. But what

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gives this stability is that many of the works themselves really reflect folklore, Serbian folklore, Croat folklore, and they are like a child's spells, puns, gnomic chants, which suddenly look at the world in totally unique ways. And so he

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deals with a world that came through World War II in totally spare, stripped-down language, no rhetoric whatsoever, and tries to find the meaning of- meaning in the world around him in its simplest forms. Tonight with me, I have my old friend,

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John Ivo, as he is called in Serbo-Croat, Basor. John, it is great to have you on the show. John Ivo Basor: Thank you very much for inviting me, Mort. Morton Marcus: Oh, your voice sounds good and true.

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John Ivo Basor: Great. Thanks a lot. Morton Marcus: And he is going to be reading some of these poems, which though they're in sequences, are very short. And he's gonna be reading some of these poems in Serbo-Croat. In

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case you people around here do not know John, who has been so active in the Serbo-Croat community, the Yugoslav community of Watsonville, he teaches English as a Second Language at the Watsonville-Aptos Adult School

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of Education and also in the English Department at Cabrillo College, and he is the man who runs Adriatic Travel in Watsonville. If you want to get some trips to maybe one of the most beautiful, exciting countries in the world, you can

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tell where some of my interests are. The second speaker is Zarko Radich, who has taught language and history in Yugoslavia, was born in Herzegovina, and after teaching, he became a journalist for both newspapers and TV, and believe it or not, he owns and

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manages Jack's Smoke Shop, which is one of the oldest smoke shops in California. It was founded in 1914 when Watsonville really was almost 50% Serbo-Croat I guess. And Jack who owns it is Jack Novic. Did I pronounced that right?

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Zarko Radich: Close. Novcich. Jack Novcich Morton Marcus: Okay, and welcome, Zarko. Zarko Radich: Thank you very much. Morton Marcus: I cannot tell you out there the humor, wisdom, and

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wit, and joy that Vasko Popa provides in his poems, but I'm going to try. And in fact, the three of us are going to try and I have been showing some of these translations of mine, which I did with Vasko Popa over here twenty years ago to Zarko

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and John, and they have been very nice and courteous about the whole thing. But at any rate, these are translations that I've done with Charlie Simic, and then when Popa was over here reading at Cabrillo College on that historic tour,

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which ended with Popa meeting the great Czeslaw Milosz who then had not won the Nobel Prize, up in Berkeley and giving a reading up in Berkeley, on a party afterwards in Czeslaw's house, too, resistance fighters from World War II, and two the

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giants of world poetry: It was certainly a week I will never forget in my life. But at any rate, we are now going to do one of these wonderful little poems of Vasko Popa's. And first we will have Zarko read the first poem in the sequence, then I

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will read the English, then John will read the second poem in the sequence, and then I will read the entire remainder of the sequence in English. The poem is called, "Bone to Bone," and what it features are two bones talking to each other. And we're

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going to read the entire sequence of seven poems. And, well, the way I look at this is these bones have different personalities and look at the world in a different way. One bone is extremely optimistic and looks at everything in the world

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as good. Obviously, these bones have just died and are from a body. And the other bone is very, very pessimistic and is a real grouch. So, here is: BONE TO BONE, the first one, and Zarko is going to read the first

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poem for us. Zarko Radich: [In Serbo-Croatian] Morton Marcus: One: IN THE BEGINNING Now it's easy, we're saved from flesh. What do we do now? Say

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something. I would like to be lightning's back bone. Say some more. What should I say? Hurricane's hipbone? Say something else. That's all I know. Heaven's ribs. We're nobody's bones, say something else.

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John Ivo Basor: And the second one will be read by John Basor. [In Serbo-Croatian] Morton Marcus: Second poem from BONE TO BONE: AFTER THE BEGINNING

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What should we do now? That's a good question. Now, we'll have marrow for supper. We had marrow for lunch, there's a hollow feeling inside me. Then we'll make music. We like music. What will we do if the dogs come? They like bones. We'll stick in

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their throats and have some fun. Three: IN THE SUN How wonderful sunbathing naked, I never cared much for flesh. Me neither, those shreds didn't fool me. I'm crazy about you

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naked. Don't let the sun caress you, let's rather love each other. But please, not here, not in the sun. Here everyone can see us, dear bony. Four: UNDERGROUND

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Muscle of darkness, muscle of flesh, they come to the same thing. What shall we do now? We'll invite all the bones from all times, we'll bake in the sun. What shall we do then? Then we'll go pure, go on growing just as we please. What do we do

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after that? Nothing. We'll wander here and there, we'll be eternal bone beings. Well then, let's just wait for the earth to yawn open. Five: IN THE MOONLIGHT

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What's that? It's as if something snowy, some snowy flesh were clinging to me. I don't know what it is. It's as if marrow were running through me, cold marrow. I don't know either, it's as if everything were beginning again with a more

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horrible beginning. Let me ask you something: can you bark? Six: BEFORE THE END Where should we go now? Where should we go? Nowhere. Where else would two bones go? What do we do there? There waiting for

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us a long time, there eagerly expecting us are No One and his wife Nothing. What good are we to them? They are old. They are without bones. We'll be like daughters to them. Seven: THE END

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I am a bone, you are a bone. Why have you swallowed me? I can't see myself anymore. What's wrong with you? It's you who swallowed me. I can't see myself either. Where am I now? No, no one knows anymore who is where, nor who is who. All is an ugly dream of

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dust. Can you hear me? I can hear both you and me. There's the spur of a rooster's leg, crawling out of us. The playfulness of Vasko Popa which hide some of the not only the pathos of the human condition, which I think is

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very, very clear in, "Bone to Bone," the endless cycle of life that goes on, but it's a painful cycle. The line in there is it's even more horrible, "a more horrible beginning than before," is really what the poems are about. They look at an

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existential world, and they try to find, in that world, some sense of meaning. And let's see, he says, he looks for example at- in another poem of his, he looks at the sky and it looks to him like a giant throat that is about to swallow him. And that

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of course, is the- the picture of, but a playful one and a frightening one, of the existential sense of nature as being our murderer, but our sort of senseless, non-malignant or malevolent, mellifelous(?) one. Here's the poem, it goes like

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this. Don't try to seduce me, blue vault, I'm not playing. You are the vault of the thirsty pallet over my head. Ribbon of space don't wind around my legs, don't try to entrance me. You are a

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wakeful tongue, a seven-forked tongue beneath my steps, I'm not coming. My ingenuous breath, my breathless breathing, don't try to intoxicate me. I sense the breath of the beast, and I'm not playing. I hear the familiar clash of dogs, the clash of

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teeth on teeth, I feel the dark of the jaws that closes over me, that opens my eyes and I see. I see that I'm not dreaming. But always we come back to the play. Always, we come back to look at the simple things of the world. As I said, a simple floor

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nail, a nail and a hammer. A simple object or parts of the body that are looked at so intently and intensely, that they suddenly flower not only into something strange, unique, and meaningful, but they flower into myth. And it is this

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quality that has made Popa's poetry international, the simplicity of it, how it can be translated. And again, the mythologizing, the making literally epic poems in these short sequences, and just think of "Bone to Bone." It really is

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all about the human condition, it is about the big questions of life and death. Again, Popa, as all great poets, is not afraid to look at those subjects and pursue them as so many poets, and I'm afraid alas over here, are because some you can fall so

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easily down the chasm of overwriting and sentimentality. At any rate, we are going to read now from another section which illustrates this playfulness, and also how meaningful it can become. We're going to read four poems from

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the thirteen-poem sequence called, "Games." And I have said about this that it is games people play. And if you know my books, you know that "Origins" really, the whole center of "Origins" are games people play, they were inspired by these

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poems of Popa when I first discovered them through the Serbo-Croat critic Alexander [unidentified], and helped him do some translations of one or two poems here and there, so Popa has really influenced me enormously. Let us do some of

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this right now. We're going to do, "Floor Nail." And Zarko are you going to read, "Floor Nail?" This is just a common nail that you would hammer into the floor and here's what happens to it. FLOOR NAIL from "Games," read by Zarko Radich.

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Zarko Radich: [In Serbo-Croatian] Morton Marcus: FLOOR NAIL One is the nail, another is pliers. The rest are workmen. The pliers grab the nail by the head with their teeth, their

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arms, they grab it and keep pulling and pulling, pulling it out of the floor. Usually they just wring its head off. It's hard pulling a nail out of the floor. The workmen then say: "These pliers are lousy." They crush their jaws, break their

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arms, and throw them out of the window. Then someone else is a floor nail, another is pliers, and the rest are workmen. And the second from the sequence is called: THE SEDUCER and it will be read by John Basor:

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John Ivo Basor: [In Serbo-Croatian] Morton Marcus: SEDUCER One caresses the leg of a chair until the chair moves and motions him sweetly with her leg. Another kisses a keyhole,

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keeps kissing it, and how, until the keyhole returns the kiss. A third one stands aside, stares at the two, keeps shaking his head until his head drops off. Now, from that simple language and that simple satire on our

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sensual appetites, and our prudishness there in the end, we go to some of this gorgeous imagery here, which seems to penetrate to the depths of some kind of myth that we only know in our unconscious or in dreams in this gorgeous poem which

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actually follows, "Seducer," in the sequence called: WEDDING, and this will be read by Zarko. Zarko Radich: [In Serbo-Croatian] Morton Marcus: Again from the sequence, "Games:"

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WEDDING Each takes off his skin, exposes his own galaxy which has never seen the night. Each fills his skin with rocks, starts dancing with it by the light of his own stars. The one who doesn't stop

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till dawn, the one who doesn't bat an eyelid or drop, he's the one who earns his skin. This game is rarely played. And again from the sequence, John will read: THE ROSE THIEVES

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John Ivo Basor: [In Serbo-Croatian] Morton Marcus: And this is: THE ROSE THIEVES Someone be a rosebush, several be the wind's daughters, others

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the rose thieves. The rose thieves sneak up to the rosebush, one of them steals a rose, hides it in his heart. The wind's daughters appear, see the plundered rose bush and catch the rose thieves. They open the thieves' chests one by one, in

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some they find hearts, in others, so help me, nothing. They continue opening the thieves' chests until they discover the right heart and in that heart, the stolen rose. The book goes on with other poems that really show the

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nature of a world gone mad. Several of these are just wonderful, beautiful poems, funny poems but here's one that really illustrates the sense in the sequence and it is called: CHASE

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Those on one side, bite off the others arm or leg or anything, hold it in their teeth, run as fast as they can, bury it in the ground. The others chase all around, sniffing, sneaking, sniffing, seeking, dig up all the ground. If they happily find

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their arm or leg or anything, it's their turn to bite. The game goes on briskly, while there are arms, while there are legs, while there is anything. And that certainly seems to relate to the world today and

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what's going on in the Persian Gulf and if I may say so, gentlemen, to what is going on in Yugoslavia right now with the eminent attack being felt by the Croats and the Slovenians, by the Serbians and Montenegrans. So this dance of death that is

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part of certainly Yugoslavian history now through all time, I hope it doesn't repeat either, I really do. Again, this goes on to poems like, "Hunter," which totally unexpected and one that I think is so beautiful, the twelfth one. I've already read

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the one about the hands clutching the belly, the cold sweat, and the hands reaching for the forehead and there is no foreahead as the world totally seems to dissolve and just really vaporize, if we want to use some science-fiction

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language, in the last poem. But right before that is a game called, "Ashes," and it is beautiful, but it is dark. And I'm just gonna read the English of this because I know it's not- Do you have, "Ashes?" Yeah, I don't think it's there. It's

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the next to the last poem if it is, it's, "Games," it's in "Games." Zarko Radich: Yes. Morton Marcus: Okay, here's this poem that's in Serbo-Croatian

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called: ASHES John Ivo Basor: [In Serbo-Croatian] Morton Marcus: So this is the poem near the end of the last

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game in which nothing is left, and this poem is called, "Ashes," so, you can see the significance of these things. The game of: ASHES

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Some are nights, others stars. Each night sets fire to its star, and dances a black dance around it until the star burns out. Then the nights split up, some become stars, the others remain nights. Again, each night sets fire to its star and dances

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a blank dance around it until the star burns out. The last night becomes both star and night. It sets fire to itself, dances the black dance around itself. We are presenting a program of poetry by Vasko Popa, one of the

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world's great poets, the greatest poet to use the Serbo-Croat language of Yugoslavia. We will be back after a musical break.