OCTOBER

today they opened up a small piece of the earth and buried the Assembler of Words in the month when leaves fall and in the moment when both the dead and the living are silent each in their own way

he did not take a single word with him and his whole fortune was in words and left to the forgetful and they said they would not crumble his verses and they would come to this same place even when it is covered with heaps of years and his tired soul is somewhere high above riding a blue cloud and they said they would not forget and they would tell those who could not come how it’s been a long time since someone was so quietly buried like their Leaf from the month in which leaves fall

and they would search the world for words which the Assembler of Words could not assemble they would as they said publish it once in some volume while the Assembler of Words waits in the halls of infinity

and on the day that he was buried the Assembler of Words nobody saw a single god nearby neither his nor mine nor of his nor of my mother

nor the god of this man here who is silent and nobody found out how well he knew the Assembler of Words and at which bar and after how many bears and at which sea and

in which land once perhaps the two of them swore a tacit and strange loyalty that is usually sworn to only by assemblers of words an unspoken promise that they would to each other come when some month arrives of falling leaves wherever they are burying assemblers of words on the day and moment when both the dead and the living are silent each in their own way and the gods mind their own business and nothing inscribed in ink did they leave (to daco džamonja in sarajevo on the seventeenth day of the month when leaves fall on the day when they bury assemblers of words and in the moment when he forgave his grave-diggers and became the champion of silence)

Translated by Ulvija Tanović

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