Monday 9 May 2016

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.

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