Plava Grobnica

Plava Grobnica (Serbian Cyrillic: Плава гробница, "The Blue Tomb") is an ode written by Serbian poet Milutin Bojić during World War I. It is dedicated to the soldiers that were buried in the sea near Vido island, Greece. In his unforgettable poem, Bojić expressed the tragic fate of Serbia, whose army had passed through Montenegro and Albania to the Greek islands of Corfu and Vido, where over 5000 Serbian soldiers were buried at sea.

Bojić survived the exodus from Serbia and the desperation of Corfu, and yet in the end succumbed to tuberculosis in Salonika. "Our church bells toll the dead instead of the hours," Bojić wrote of seeing his comprades-at-arms dying around him. At the time of the Serbian retreat he had been working on an epic poem, Cain, in which he compared Bulgaria's attack on Serbia (that precipitated the retreat) to the biblical story of Cain and Abel. The poem was one of the few things he carried with him as he made the winter journey over the mountains. Upon arriving at the Adriatic only to see his fellow Serbs being thrown out to the sea for burial, he penned one of the most moving war poems of his generation -- Plava Grobnica or Ode to a Blue Sea Tomb.

Gazite tihim hodom!
Opelo gordo držim u doba jeze noćne
Nad ovom svetom vodom.

Tu na dnu, gde školjke san umoran hvata
I na mrtve alge tresetnica pada,
Leži groblje hrabrih, leži brat do brata,
Prometeji nade, apostoli jada.

Zar ne osećate kako more mili,
Da ne ruši večni pokoj palih četa?
Iz dubokog jaza mirni dremež čili,
A umornim letom zrak meseca šeta.

To je hram tajanstva i grobnica tužna
Za ogromnog mrca, k'o naš um beskrajna.
Tiha kao ponoć vrh ostrvlja južna,
Mračna kao savest, hladna i očajna.

Zar ne osećate iz modrih dubina
Da pobožnost raste vrh voda prosuta
I vazduhom igra čudna pitomina?
To velika duša pokojnika luta

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Wikipedia