POETRY PAUSE: A Common Story, Goran Simic (1994)

A Common Story

Sarajevo, January, 1993.
My friend put his wife and children on the bus
to God-knows where,
and wrote on the frozen window, I am with you.

After that moment he wrote no more, I signed
his army ID card; I wrote
his requests for a transfer to God-knows where; I wrote
the first appeal, I wrote the second;
I wrote love-letters to his wife
and kissed his children each a hundred times.

I wanted to sign these letters: "From someone whose words
have been sluiced into the sewers
by whoever cleans the shit and snow off buses."

When they brought him to the hospital, it seemed
that half his body was missing.
I ran to read him a letter from his wife -
the first letter she'd sent - a love letter
I'd written as fast as I could.
                                             He didn't hear me.
He was breathless, dying for breath,
trying to find enough breath to say out loud
the words that had been sluiced into the sewer
by whoever cleans the shit and snow off buses.

 http://goransimic.com/