My Heart has The Shape Of KOSMET 

                                                By Mile Ristovic

  If I could transplant pain of my people
  Into my chest,
  I would sign all anathemas
  For their salvation

My heart has the shape of Kosmet
It bleeds today downstream the Drim, Lab and Sitnica 
While the States and NATO throw bombs
Onto my people and my Gracanica 

My heart has the shape of Kosmet
The left atrium is Kosovo
The right atrium is Metohia 
The left ventricle is Gracanica
The right ventricle is Visoki Decani 

NATO bombs burrow my heart
NATO bombs boil the black Kosovar soil
Which grows sorrow and bitterness instead of peonies 
They beat off fairies from the Goles Mountain
Into the abyss—into the black sun of Kosovar tragedy 

My heart has the shape of Kosmet
It bleeds today downstream the Drim, Lab and Sitnica
While the States and NATO throw bombs
Onto my people and my Gracanica

Chicago, March 26, 1999
On the way to the anti-war demonstrations
when I carried the banner fixed to the broom
with the written slogan "United Nothing" (UN)

(Translated by
Dragana Konstantinovic)
 
 

    KOSMET - Abbreviated name for Kosovo and Metohia.  In the thousand years long-history of Serbs, Kosovo and Metohia were for many centuries the state center and chief religious stronghold, the heartland of their culture and springwell of its historical traditions.
  Drim, Lab and Sitnica - Rivers in Kosovo
  Gracanica - Gracanica monastery, built by Serbian Holy King Stefan Milutin in 1310. Monastery was dedicated to the Resurrection of Holy Mother.  Several missiles hit in the vicinity of the monastery. Detonations and the bomb parts caused the damages of the Church and the residence house.
  Metohia - Metohia designates the western part of the today's province of Kosovo.  It derives its name from the Greek word metohion, pl. metohia, meaning - monastery estates.  In the Middle Ages all the most important Serb Orthodox Monasteries in the region had their estates in Metohia.
  Visoki Decani -Visoki Decani Monastery, built between1327 and 1335 by St. King Stephen of Decani, dedicated to the Ascension of the Lord.  The monastery is settled in the picturesque valley of the Bistrica river surrounded by the mountains and forests of the Prokletije Mountain range.  It is the largest and best preserved monastery from the Middle Ages in Serbia.
  peonies - A wild flower that grows on the Field of Blackbirds.  It is believed that its red color comes from the blood of Serbian soldiers who lost their lives in the Battle of Kosovo that took place on that field on June 15, 1389.
  Kosovar tragedy - The Serbian national ideology which emerged out of Kosovo's tribulations and Kosovo's suffering that are the pillars of that grand edifice that constitutes the Serbian national pantheon.

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