Lament for Vijećnica
The National Library burned for three days last August and
the city was choked with black snow.
Set free from the stacks, characters wandered the streets,
mingling with passers-by and the souls of dead soldiers.
I saw Werther sitting on the ruined graveyard fence; I saw
Quasimodo swinging one-handed from a minaret.
Raskolnikov and Mersault whispered together for days
in my cellar; Gavroche paraded in camouflage fatigues;
Yossarian was already selling spares to the enemy; for a
few dinars young Sawyer would dive off Princip's bridge.
Each day---more ghosts and fewer people alive; and the terrible
suspicion formed that the shells fell just for me.
I locked myself in the house. I leafed through tourist guides.
I didn't come out until the radio told me
how they'd taken ten tons of coals from the deepest cellar of
the burned-out National Library.
--Goran Simic (1993)
