Velid Beganovic

Velid Beganovic Poems

Velid Beganovic Biography

V. B. Borjen was born in 1987 in the Socialist Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Yugoslavia and now lives in the Czech Republic. His work in Bosnian has previously appeared in magazines across the former Yugoslav region and Hungary, including Strane, P.U.L.S.E., NEMA, Symposion, Ex-Symposion, Novi plamen, Metafora, Astronaut, Gracanicki glasnik and the daily Oslobodenje. His first poetry collection Prirucnik za levitiranje - Levitation Manual - won the 2012 Mak Dizdar Award and was published the following year to significant acclaim. Four poems from his second manuscript have been included in the forthcoming Greek-Bosnian Anthology of Young Bosnian Poets by Vakxikon magazine & P.E.N. International. His poetry and prose originally written in English have previously appeared in Hypothetical: A Review of Everything Imaginable, AZURE and the Esthetic Apostle. His paintings have been featured in Not Your Mother's Breast Milk and most recently in the October 2019 issue of the Chaleur Magazine.)

The Best Poem Of Velid Beganovic

The Polish Triptych

For Martin K.

Part I
Past the Neptune Fountain, Gdańsk


We drag our feet in concord
walking across the bridge
over Motława,
like two ships trying to sail
having forgotten to
weigh their anchors to be
hoisted up.

We trail silt in our wake
that mirrors the mist
lapping at the Crane:
It is early morning,
the city will forgive us.

Before we breathe salt
we must pass the hulls
towering on land
and scratch our skins
on the rust and angles
of the past;
a spot of Solidarity.

There to show something
we have missed -
but how many beginnings
had we missed before
and still lived on,
here is but our own:
Filling crevices with
whiteness, burning rings,
stretching up to fix the stars
and bite into the moon,
prancing, holding hands.
Beginning again.



Part II
The Sopot Pier



The train breaks and screeches
and we climb down onto the
land-d-d land land
before we see
the sea,
always out of season,
spitting fossils
and amber.

I spot you inside
the yellow on my palm,
your youth caught
in the resin of my old bark
when I was a spruce,
propelled into the future
where I collect you again,
unchanged but crystallised,
and my mouth begins
to kiss and lick you
out of your splendid
transparent grave,
for us to walk on the
pier again,
and talk between
the cries of gulls and wind slaps,

Then blue-ue-ue blue blue
the sea
stretching endless
fractals in your eyes.



Part III
Arriving in Gdynia



I washed my feet in the Baltic
three times:

The first was for the sea;

The second to hold your hand
while you shivered in;

The third was for me,
to release the tidal urge
and embrace the patience of
many broken things arriving
on the same shore

Where Neptune combs
his beard on our toes
and the siren call of other
tomorrows
needs no wax to resist;

We are home.
Those are only relics of
ancient coastal lore.
We travel for pleasure,
and metaphorically.
You weave yourself closer
as I spear the crests of the
waves with my looks;

Far off in the distance
slow ships pass,
mammoths in the steppe.
But here, before us
the sea unloads gifts,
they thud and fan out
and we leap,
caught unreadied
into life, unreadied,
unspared.

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