A mountain for you, a mountain for me

“A mountain for you, a mountain for me”, you said to me while the silent rain was falling on our umbrella, and we stood on grass that was becoming ever more sodden with water.

“What do you mean?”

“I am looking at those two mountains in front of us, and imagining me going into one of them, and you going into the other.”

“And then what?”

“And then those two mountains merge into one.”

“But what about you and me?”

“Then we both become one mountain.”

 

translated from Montenegrin by Peter Stonelake and the author, Tanja Bakić

 

Planina tebi, planina meni

„Planina tebi, planina meni“, tako si mi rekao dok je tiha kiša padala po našem kišobranu, a mi stajali na travi koja se sve više topila vodom.

„Kako to misliš?“

„Gledam u ove dvije planine naspram, i razmišljam o tome kako ja ulazim u jednu, a ti u drugu“.

„I šta onda?“

„I onda se dvije planine polako stapaju u jednu“.

„A mi?“

„I onda se i mi pretvaramo u jednu planinu“.

 

-Tanja Bakić

_______________________________________________

 

Tanja Bakić was born in Montenegro in 1981. Tanja is the author of five highly-praised poetry collections. She published her first book of poems when she was only fifteen. Her most recent collection, Sjeme i druge pjesme (The Seed and Other Poems), was published bilingually in English and Montenegrin in 2013. Tanja is also a translator, a music and literary critic, and holds an MA in English language and literature. She took part in a colloquium on William Blake at the Tate Britain where she also gave a poetry performance. Her poems have been published in international anthologies, and she has been awarded fellowships several times. She was the recipient of the Central European Initiative Fellowship for the year 2016, and received the British Modern Humanities Research Association Fellowship.