Cheese and Olives Poem by Branko Čegec

dragozetići village is on the island's far northwest.
just outside porozina ferry port.
steep approach, narrow streets, houses with terraces,
a church and an old italian school: a huge building with big
broken windows because long nothing happens in it.
the only place that emits fullness is filled with emptiness.
it follows the story of the island, big and deserted, or it just seems so,
because people are mostly tourists, who come and go,
and only those who never managed to escape stay on the island.
there's nothing of cres on the island, because no one produces anything.
olives everywhere, but the oil is only from bra~.
sheep everywhere, but the cheese if only from pag.
yes, lamb meat: they have a special way of preparing it, in belo.
today i remembered that i don't know anyone from the island of cres.
not a single person. and that long ago, in my last year of studies in the
south slavic department, i applied for a position on cres. and got accepted.
and that never before i had been on cres. and that i
panicked horribly. and that i came up with a disgusting lie. and that
i never actually went to see what kind of a job this was.
and that never after that did I look for a job at a school,
because i might get accepted, and this would mean trouble,
up to my neck, because some other place could also be
abandoned and sad like cres in november.
but, man, this island is beautiful, probably even more beautiful
than when hordes of italians and slovenes,
croatians, french and germans sniff at every hole,
turn every sheep shit over, peek in behind every curtain,
and then leave without having seen anything: they leave without a smell in their noses and
a taste in their mouths because they ate kebabs with onion
and burgers with sour cream, and drank laško or ožujsko beer,
soaking their dough-like behinds in crystal graveled coves.
dragozetići village is on the island's far northwest.
just outside porozina ferry port.
steep approach, narrow streets, houses with terraces,
a church and an old italian school: a huge building with big
broken windows because long nothing happens in it.
the only place that emits fullness is filled with emptiness.

2004-08-09

Translated by Tomislav Kuzmanović