Dragan Dragojlović*

Dragan Dragojlović is a Serbian poet who lives in Belgrade. He has served the government of Serbia in various positions, including as Minister of Religions, and as Ambassador to Australia. He has also served as director of the Ivo Andrić Foundation, which grants scholarships to foreign students of Serbian studies.

He is the author of sixteen books of poetry (by last count) including The Book of Love (1992), Death’s Homeland (2008), and Patriarch’s Ladders (2017).

I have just finished reading Death’s Homeland, which I had not yet purchased when I posted (one year ago) about Dragan Dragojlović. What distinguishes this collection from any of his other poetry you might access, is that these are short lyrics (the poem below is the longest in the collection) dealing with the heartbreaking experience of the Yugoslav Civil War ― both the hopelessness of daily facing death, and the hope that comes through faith in God.

He has translated the work of several poets into Serbian, including that of Irish poet John F. Deane. The following poem, along with the rest of Death’s Homeland, was translated by Stanislava Lazarevic.

Glory Eternal

May glory eternal be with you
who fell
for Serbia,
may your wounds be blessed,
my brother in hope.

May all your delusions
be forgiven.
May your pain be eased
in heaven.
Forgive your murderer.
Pray for those
upon whom you have inflicted
suffering and death.

My brother in sin and misfortune,
do not criticize
my attempt to glorify
what transcends all words:
your sacrifice.

Choking with pain
to the point of screaming,
dare I wonder
whether it could have been different,
and whether history and hope
outlive our death.

I remain silent
repeating to myself:
you did what you could,
let God complete the rest.

*This is the second Kingdom Poets post about Dragan Dragojlović: first post.

Entry written by D.S. Martin. He is the author of five poetry collections including Angelicus (2021, Cascade) ― a book of poems written from the point-of-view of angels. His books are available through Wipf & Stock.

Dragan Dragojlović

Dragan Dragojlović is a Serbian poet of the Orthodox Christian faith. He has served in various official roles for the Serbian government, including as ambassador to Australia from 1997 to 2001.The title of his 2017 collection Patriarch’s Ladders, refers of the ladder to heaven, and honours the late Patriarch Pavle of the Serbian Orthodox Church.

Dragojlović’s best known book, in English translation, Death’s Homeland (2008) is a collection of anti-war poems. He finds people’s religious motivations for war particularly appalling, and has emphasized “the tragic enigma of how people who believe in a loving God can murder each other…” At the Ecumenical Dialogue on Reconciliation in Belgrade in 1996 ― in his alternate role as Minister of Religions in the Serbian government ― he commented on the religious nature of the war in the former Yugoslavia: “Not that many combatants were devout believers, but they made little if any distinction between national and religious identity, nor did their religious communities encourage them to make such a distinction.”

Dragojlović has translated contemporary Chinese poet Zhao Lihong into Serbian, while his own Book of Love has been translated into Chinese.

If I Succeed in Producing a Poem

If I succeed in producing a poem
then I will not rue missing out the exhibition
of inanimate objects in sfumato technique
that brings our inner and painful side
closer to the light.

A poem need not be
similar to some paintings,
a limitless geometry of inexpressible beauty
born out of a marriage
of mutually remote words,
like the blending of colours on the canvas,
or like distant stars
that engender the sky
disclosing fragments of the principle
controlled by God.

Despite his faltering pen,
despite his self-consuming thoughts,
a poet touches upon the intangible
contained in each endless moment
as occasionally happens
on a painter’s canvas.

Essentially, the painting and the poem
are two forms of the same language
that can at times convey Perfection.

Humility forbids us to wonder
what God’s judgment of that would be.

*This is the first Kingdom Poets post about Dragan Dragojlović: second post.

Entry written by D.S. Martin. He is the author of five poetry collections including Angelicus (2021, Cascade) ― a book of poems written from the point-of-view of angels. His books are available through Wipf & Stock.