Ivan Goran Kovačić’s famous poem Jama (The Pit) was written based on the mass killings of Serbs by the terrorist Ustaše across Livanjsko polje in the summer of 1941. Most notorious was the Bikuša pit in the village of Čelebić, where hundreds of Serbs — mostly children, women and the elderly — were killed and thrown into.
I.
Blood is my light and my darkness.
They dug for me a blessed night
With the happy sight from my eye sockets;
From drops of day, a furious fire ignites
A bloody pupil in my brain, like a wound.
My eyes died out upon my palm.
Surely the birds were still trembling
In them, the sky gently turned;
And I felt my bloody face
Sink into the socket with the blueness;
On my palm, my eyes smile with rays
And my tears can no longer be shed.
Only through my fingers dripped the drops
Warm and thick, which the butcher found
In the hollow gaping with deeper pain —
So he could drive the blade into my neck more sweetly:
But I was overcome by the sweetness of this blood,
And I felt the drops as if they were tears.
The last light before the dreadful night
Was the flash of a lightning-swift knife,
And a scream, still white now in blindness,
And the white, white skin of the butcher;
For to the waist they were all naked
And so bare, our eyes they pierced.
O painful light, never so fierce
And never so sharp did you break at dawn,
In arrow, in fire; and as if I had cried
Fiery tears that made the sockets burn:
And through that hell flashes scorched,
Screams of other martyrs cut through.
I do not know how long the blazing fury lasted,
When dreadful lumps began to grow in the sockets,
Like hardened balls, and I could barely stand.
Then I felt the slippery eyes upon my palm
And I said: “I am blind, my dearest mother,
How shall I now weep for you…?”
And a mighty light, like hundreds of bells
From white belfries, flared within
My mad mind: a light from Zion,
A wondrous light, a light that shines!
Radiant bird! Radiant tree! O river!
O moon! A light like mother’s milk!
But I could bear this dreadful pain no longer:
The butcher told me: “Crush your eyes!”
Half-mad, I almost knelt before him,
As a spasm soaked my fist with thick slime;
And then I heard and knew no more:
I fell into the abyss as into a grave.
II.
With cold urine they brought back our senses. Slaps
They handed out, raised us by fire and force;
And one by one, the butchers stabbed our earlobes
With dull and thick awls, without remorse.
“Laugh!” — the order came with each fresh sting —
“For all, a rope before the cross we’ll bring!”
And a ghastly laughter, cackling, roaring
Resounded, as if the dead were howling;
Even the killers were startled by that roaring
So each with a whip fell upon us, growling.
Yet still, we wept amid that long mad laughter
With empty sockets, mourning dead disaster.
When suddenly, like corpses, we went mute
(Perhaps from fear that we were still alive),
They dragged us by our swollen ears in a line,
And silent pain bent each of us aside;
(In the silence we heard a bird in the wood);
They threaded wire through our ears where we stood.
And so each man, when forced to move ahead,
From the sheer pain would groan, low and grim.
“Silence!” — the butcher roared — “It’s hard, I said,
But needed, so that no one tries to flee from him.”
And none of us would shake his head or sway,
To spare another blind man pain that way.
The bloodthirsty ones were calmed by the wire lock
And sat down, weary, in nearby shade;
And then we heard the cold water gurgle
In their burning throats, and loudly they ate,
As if after hard work; then began to jest
Coarsely with one another, like louts at rest.
They seemed to have forgotten about us:
Yawned, let out loud winds without shame.
“Eh, I saw a pretty little one today…”
Someone called out, with crude remarks to inflame.
And again came the gurgle — cold wine or water —
It jolted the blind — the wire pierced deeper, sharper.
III.
In my line, a woman began to go mad,
Screaming: “Fire! It’s burning! The house!
People, fire! The house is burning! People!”
And the wire began to bite and rouse
Our swollen, grotesque ears with rage.
The woman collapsed, smothered, to the stage.
“Socket-gazers! Eyeless ones! Skull-faced rats!
Owls! We’ll shove embers into your pits
So you can see again! You blind cats!”
A drunken butcher snarled like one who spits
And with a knife cut off the blind man’s face
By the ear, which swayed upon the wire in place.
A scream and the heavy thud of a blind victim
(Running through the dark, legs flung high),
And a fast chase after her, in the dead silence,
And a dull thud when the hunter’s knife caught its cry.
Oh, that one is saved! — I told my darkness,
Not knowing they were leading us to the pit.
My heart thudded dully against my hollow chest;
Then I heard other hearts through the wire hum.
That wild pounding pulled us forward in unrest.
(How hearts leap when they cry in the dark!)
And from that pounding I could see through holes:
My thoughts sharpened, drawn into clearer roles.
And I saw again, as if it were this very morning,
The deep pit, freshly dug just yesterday.
I strained my ears to catch the sound, the warning,
Of the first body falling, in a dull, blunt way.
With sharp awareness I decided to count:
I, the fiftieth, standing in this mount.
And I waited. Collected precise information:
Who had vanished behind, who was still ahead,
I counted, subtracted — full calculation —
As the blows and falls began to spread.
All my mind’s strength focused in that hour,
So nothing might escape my watching power.
Somewhere a cricket sang; a cloud passed over,
Casting its shadow across the field in flight.
I heard one butcher begin to relieve himself,
While another stood wide-legged to strike.
All of it shone in my hearing like in vision,
With a sun-flash on the blade’s precision.
When the first victim began to gurgle,
I heard a soft thud — a fleshy sack
Falling for long. I knew: the first stab
Strikes the throat, then between the back
Comes the second, and the hand hurls the prey
Into the pit, where it will rot away.
Someone collapsed, lifeless, before me —
Or behind — roaring in sheer dread,
And I, with intense awareness, multiplied the
Blows, subtracting each one who dropped dead,
Though every cry — each choke and shriek —
I felt like a bite at my heart’s deep peak.
A man inside the pit wept like a child,
Just bending down; his voice cracked and high.
I feared my count would be defiled —
Then a bomb burst at the pit’s base nearby.
The ground shook. I staggered, almost fell.
My last hope vanished in that sudden hell.
But fierce awareness overtook my sense:
My hearing stretched — nerves, blood, flesh and skin
All tightened. I counted thirty-one
Victims; sixty-two stabs sank in.
I gauged each thud, how hard each body landed,
And somehow hope once more commanded.
To cries from the pit another bomb flared
With thunder. The dead began to fall
More softly now, as if someone cared —
Like into water, onto a mash of gall.
Then I felt myself slipping on the gore.
A shiver ran through me — I’d reached the pit’s door!
V.
— Oh, I saw, I saw it all more clearly,
As if my eyes had been returned to me:
The pale white skin, the knife that slaughtered,
And the victims (like lambs, frozen briefly
Just before slaughter, but calmly in line
Step by step drawing near the knife’s shine).
Without a pause the line kept moving —
As if someone at the front was handing things out —
No one shouted, jerked or pleaded,
Beneath the awful blaze they reaped us without doubt
Like dead stalks of grain that barely rustle.
(That was blood we heard, from throats in tussle).
Step by step we walked; then stopped again;
A gurgle, a blow, a fall — and step once more.
I heard it louder now. Frozen, braced in pain,
I stopped: upon my lip I felt the gore
Of someone else’s blood, its bitter taste.
I was now the third, in line for the pit’s embrace.
A dreadful darkness, worse than blindness,
Clouded my mind and pressed on every sense,
And after it came a light like a hundred dawns:
Spark! Arrow! Flame! Bright avalanche immense!
A mighty light without a single shadow,
Like a sharp needle thrust into the hollow.
The man in front of me leaned back toward me,
As if from spasm; then he moaned,
Stumbled forward, sighed softly —
And the quiet sigh, with gurgling, was gone.
He plunged down, splashed like a fish. Before me
The space gaped — a chasm, wide and empty.
I remember everything: I swayed forward, then back,
Off balance — as if I stood
At the brink of some dreadful chasm,
And behind me another abyss stood.
A white arrow shot into my chest,
A black one struck from behind. Into the depths.
VI.
In the mind’s abyss, a shudder revived me.
I felt the cold corpse pressing on me,
Death’s chill fusing its flesh to mine.
Fear flashed to thought: a woman screams!
I’m in the pit — the gullet of our flesh;
Cold as fish, dead bodies around me mesh.
I lie on a corpse: a pile of cold flesh,
Slack, slimy, soaking in a soup of blood,
And terror lifts me from the ice like a breath:
Awareness flares like lightning when the woman cries.
I turn in fever, stretch toward the scream,
And reach a wound — slick beneath my fingers’ stream.
And for the first time, all life’s strength
Began to gather over the dead;
Toward the scream, I reached, and in the sockets
Of a skull, I drove my fingers instead.
The naked bodies seemed to shriek as one —
All of hell echoed, howling in the darkened sun.
A bomb will fall! — I was struck with terror;
In a horrible spasm I grabbed downward.
I found a throat — ghastly — and the corpse
Wrestled me, began to slide toward me forward.
His throat gurgled in a bloody gash;
I heard footsteps and voices beyond the crash.
Oh my God, a woman embraced me then
With the embrace of her second death:
How twisted the skin of her face had been…
Old woman! Grandma! And I took with breath
Her bony hands and kissed them with fire.
It felt as though I’d killed my mother prior.
I heard her groaning in the grasp of death,
And madly wished to bring her back to life.
Then I begged all the corpses for forgiveness.
I felt stiff lips, bent in their strife —
And I blacked out. When I escaped the dark,
I still sobbed bitterly, barely a spark.
VII.
I fell silent. Alone among cold corpses,
With death’s chill settled on my back,
On my limbs. Among the icy dead
My throat, my tongue, my palate burned with lack.
The ice of death kept silent. In it, hell burned.
And not one scream to make the silence turn.
That dreadful weight lying on top of me
Would not even grant the cold
Of death’s own ice to numb my throat;
It grew still heavier — then suddenly I nearly cried: water flows!
I hear it running down over the corpses;
Ah, the cold stream! — but it burns, it scorches, it scorches!
Along bare skin, down the spine’s dark trench,
Over stomach, chest, loins and thighs,
The chilly stream ignites a searing fire,
Carving angry little channels in the flesh.
And when a drop scorched my lip with its flow,
My burned tongue tasted living lime below!
The pit is full: now they pour lime
Over the corpses, so we don’t stink while living.
Oh, thank them — now the dead are warmed
By the flames of their mercy’s giving…
I feel the stiffening corpses jerk beside me,
Like dead fish twitching when the cook salts them lightly.
That final twitch of a dying nerve,
That strange shiver I drifted on,
Made me bless the murderer’s curve:
Oh look! Another body here lives on —
The old woman strokes me with her cold hand,
She knows my torment does not end — I understand!
VIII.
When the last wave of life in the dead had stilled,
I heard footsteps echo like a distant tide:
Someone circled the pit a time or two;
Then all fell silent, like death in a century’s stride.
I shifted a leg, pressed both elbows in —
Like a gravedigger pulling himself from within.
I was struck with horror: the corpses moved,
Slid over me, slowly collapsing —
They laughed, they wept, they gasped and shouted,
Reached out their hands, furiously choking me…
I felt fingernails, hips, flanks,
Bellies, mouths — all trying to catch me alive.
Terrified, I froze. They froze with me.
Now the weight was less. A dead leg
Fell across my shoulder. No one
Was chasing me anymore! — It’s from my own climbing
That the dead are falling! — I told myself; —
That’s a woman’s hair tangled around your neck.
A cold draft swept across my lips
Through the layer of corpses — I was near the surface!
And I gasped like a drowning man: thick blood
Sprayed sharply down my throat through the nose’s passage.
I laughed — but had someone seen me laugh,
Twisted like that, they would have wept on my behalf
Or frozen in terror, speechless and grim
Before that grotesque face. For what comfort is left:
From now on people will think that I laugh
When I cry, and that I cry when I smile. Bereft.
These hollow sockets, nests of dreadful black,
Will remind the world of the pit’s dark crack.
And I felt guilty, as if I betrayed them,
Leaving the corpses behind in that abyss,
Because this air is living… and I am not living…
And I waited for them to throw me back with the rest.
But the wound throbbed with living pain: You’re alive! it said.
I pulled myself together. Moisture came — with it, evening spread.
IX.
Oh, never have I longed for darkness
With such desire. Look! Dew is sliding
Down the corpses to me, into the pit!
My burning tongue began to lick
The droplets from hands, legs, dead flesh
That leaned above me like a gutter’s edge.
Madly and wildly I began to climb,
Trampling chests and bellies without care —
And when dead air wheezed from a body beneath me,
I no longer flinched. I tore hair,
Pulled long strands, climbed through flesh,
Driven by thirst like a lunatic’s rage.
I felt no pain, no fear, no shame;
I shoved down corpse after corpse, I grabbed, I crawled
Over them like over broken ground.
And perhaps I trampled my own dead sister, appalled,
Dragged a neighbour, broke the limbs of someone dear.
Thirst gave me madness — and monstrous strength clear.
When I dragged myself wildly out of the pit,
I forgot all reason, caution, or even if it was dark:
Across the bloodied ground I crawled, pulled my body
Toward the grass — like a beast, an animal, I sucked it in;
I buried myself in it, ate it, swallowed it,
And floated through the meadow as if on a river.
I came to — lying there, mouth full of grass,
Burning, freezing: trapped in a heavy torment.
Saved! But where, where can I run now?
I shivered: a butcher’s song rang through the air —
Far off. Mocking our pain, it echoed there.
And hatred flared. Grief let me go.
X.
Suddenly, the scent of burning
Was carried to me by the wind — from the ashes of my village;
A scent that summoned all memory rising:
All weddings, harvests, carts and gatherings,
All funerals, mourning songs, final prayers —
All that life once sowed and death has now reaped.
Where is the small joy, the glint of glass,
The swallow’s nest, a breath from the nursery past;
Where is the cradle’s beat, gently stirred,
And golden house dust in the sunbeam’s cast?
Where is the hum of spindles, the scent of bread,
That with the hearth’s cricket praised life’s peace;
Where are the windows with a slice of sky,
The quiet creak of doors, the threshold’s sacred lease?
Where is the bell from cattle in the stall,
Whose sound, from far away, across the old wood floor,
Would drop into our sleep; while stars would fall
With centuries of peace on village and kin evermore?
Nowhere is there weeping. Laughter. Cursing. Song.
The moon travels on, shining over scorched remains:
The weeping of the village fountain has gone long —
A dog’s blackened corpse lies stiff across the lanes…
Is there a place for pain and suffering still,
Where a living man endures, bears, bleeds?
Is there a place where a blow strikes at will,
And you must live with the one who plants the seeds?
Is there a place where children still scream,
Where a father has his daughter, a mother her son?
Is there a place where your sister still weeps,
And her brother lays a lily on her chest — undone?
Is there a place where flowers on the window
Still mark joy and soothe pain below?
Is there a greater wealth or fortune
Than the chest, the bench, the table we know?
From the forest, with the mountain’s roar,
A muffled blast thundered through the trees.
After it, scattered bullets cried —
Like his children, their voices in the breeze.
Overhead the sharp sound echoed, thinned —
A battle was raging. The avenger had come in!
All my ancestral hearths blazed in my chest,
My blood, spilled before, burned with vengeance;
Every vein ignited — and like at midday,
The sun of Freedom shattered all my silence.
Following the trail of rising smoke and flame,
I charged, I flew toward your gunfire’s name.
That’s where you found me lying on my side,
My brothers — blood kin, unknown heroes all;
You were singing, and as the daylight wide
Rose like signs divine, in a glowing sprawl,
I was bathed in it. I asked: could this be dreams?
Who was singing? Who dressed my wounds with gleams?
I felt a woman’s soft hand on my brow;
A sweet voice I heard: “Comrade, we’re Partisans!
Rest now! Your torment has been avenged somehow!”
My hands reached out toward the voice’s compassion —
And found her gentle face, her hair, her gun,
Her healer’s bomb — a new day had begun.
I sobbed, and still I weep to this day
Only through my throat, for I have no eyes,
Only through my heart, for tears were once
Shed by a butcher’s knife — the last time I’d cry.
No pupils left to see you — no strength to stand —
But oh, my sorrow! I long to join your band.
Who are you? From where? I don’t know — but I warm
Myself in your light. Sing to me — for I feel
That now, only now, I truly live — though I may die soon.
I sense the sacred Freedom and Revenge made real…
Your song returns to me the light of sight,
As mighty as a people, as high as the sun’s flight.
(Translated from the Serbo-Croatian original)