THE PIT
by Ivan Goran Kovacic

BLOOD is my daylight and darkness too.               
Blessing of night has been gouged from my cheeks                    
Bearing with it my more lucky sight.                
Within those holes, for tears, fierce fire inflamed                     
The bleeding socket as if for brain a balm –                
While my bright eyes died on my own palm

While played, I never doubt, God's feathered creatures,
Reflected still in them, and clouds' procession;    
But all I felt were my blood–spattered features,
Bruised gulfs in that once brillant profusion.    
How radiant lay my eyeballs in my hand,
Yet from those eyes no tear could more descend!

Then ever other fingers ran the warm
Coagulating blood my slaughterer found    
By the profounder agony of holes he formed
For better grip, more sensuously to wound;    
But me the softness of my blood enthralled,
And I rejoiced as blood were red tears falling

The final light before the frightful night
The lightning swooping of the polished knife,   
The cry too white still in my blinded sight,
The bleach-white bodies of the murderers,   
Who stripped their torsos for their sweaty task –
Was dazzling even to my blinded mask.

O painful daylight, never so hard yet
Or penetrating did you break the East   
With fiery arrow; I might have thought I shed
Teardrops with leaping flames that seared my cheeks   
Through all that hell so many lightnings brent,
So many cries of other victims rent.

What time that furious conflagration fanned,
All that I knew of time were callouses for eyes,    
Hard-grown and aching; and could hardly stand.
And only then my slippery eyeballs fingered   
And knew – and cried: My sight, O Mother mine, is gone.
Then dazzling daylight like a myriad carillons
From endless gleaming bell-towers in my crazy   
Brain illumined like the lights of Zion,
A lovely light – a light which sanctified –   
Bright birds, bright river, trees and, brilliant
Boon pure as mother's milk, still brighter moon.

Now came a torture I had never guessed –
My murderer commanded "Break your own eyes!"    
I nearly prayed for mercy to the beast,
But slimy-fingered spasmic hands obeyed –   
And then no more I heard, no more could tell,
To empty nothyng faltered, and I feel.

II 

WITH chilly urine woke me, and with blows
Belaboured fire back to my head, and then   
These executioners pierced our ear lobes
With blunted, clumsy spikes, each one in turn –   
"Laugh, laugh!" they ordered, as they thrust their tools,
"Ear–rings are fire for force-converted fools!"

Then horrid laughter, sobbing, loud and wild
Reverberated as if dead men laughed;    
But crazy humour hindered those defiled –
To silence us our wilted flesh they flayed;   
But endless now in our long choking wit,
With gaping sockets our dead sorrow wept.

Then suddenly like corpses we were still
(No doubt from fear lest we were still alive) –   
Tugged by our swollen ears they dressed us, till
The silent torture turned us all awry   
(But birds that sang to us, not one did tire)
While through our tattered lobes was drawn a wire.

So each man of us if the least he starts
Howls dully when he feels the frightful pain.   
"Silence" - the executioner – "we know it smarts,
But we're not going to let you go again!"   
Not one of us could even shake his head
But give another blinding pain instead.

That warder wire appeased our cruel captors,
And, tired, nearby they sat down in the shade;    
Refreshing water gurgle then was heard
Down parching throats, laud pleasure as they ate,   
As if they'd laboured hard, till they began
To pass foul, slimy jokes from man to man.

III

NOW in my rank a girl went mad and shrieked
Her warning – "Men! Fire! the house is burning,   
Fire!" And now the wire strung through us wreaked
New agony and rent distorted gaps   
In all our monster ears until she fell
And choking lay, oblivious to hell.

"Blind sockets, deaths-head skulls, you purblind rats,
We'll doctor you with hot coals in those holes    
To make you see again, blind blinking cats!"
And, as he spoke, a drunken murderer lent   
Leering forward, and slashed down through a face,
To leave its ear still dangling, wired in place.

We heard the victim's cry, his frenzied pace
As, thus released, down maddened dark he ran;   
Through mortal silence then we heard the chase,
And, as the knife struck twice, his heavy fall.   
So one is saved, I told my night of it,
No knew they led our steps towards the pit.

I heard the heart dull in my hollow breast
And through the wire to others' beating harked;   
To that dumb drum we pressed our steps ahead
(Haw loud it rumbled through the weeping dark!)   
By that tattoo I saw through holes for eyes
My thoughts assemble as in bright sunrise.

And saw again, as I had seen at dawn,
The hollow pit which yesterday we dug;    
I strained my hearing and at last it came –
That sudden flat sound as each victim fell –    
Knife-edged, my thought itself began to tell
The forty-nine before me, known so well.

And, waiting fingered memory's index,
Ticked whom they took before, behind, all round –   
So add, subtract, until the following blows
Descend and new men die; till all my strength   
Of mind to dazzling clarity was grown.
To let no change take place, and pass unknown.

Somewhere cicadas sang; a single cloud
Brushed fleeting shadow over everything.    
I heard one murderer nature easing loudly,
The while another, heated, wildly slew –    
All this engraved like sight, and glittered clear
As sun upon the knife-edge, in my ear.

continued