Vasko Popa: Wolf Shadow

They say my great-grandmother

The witch Sultana Urošević

Had a she-wolf’s shadow

By moonlight she never

Went out of doors

So no one should tread on her shadow

Take her secret powers

And kill her on the spot

They say

It’s from great-grandmother I have

These eyes and this tongue

I don’t know about the wolf shadow

By moonlight always

And often by sunlight

I walk backwards

Just in case

Tr. Anne Pennington and Francis R. Jones. The wolf is the symbol of the Serbian people. Popa’s “Homage to the Lame Wolf” was especially resonant for Serbs (and not just ultra-nationalists) during the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s. I feel more comfortable with this poem – not that Popa would have endorsed the xenophobic madness that was brewing when he died in 1991.