The Meeting of the Waters

 

The Meeting of the Waters

 

From distant lands

They force their way

Contorting, twisting, dancing

Their fluvial majesties tantalise

Ignoring man

Ignoring time

 

Ancient city parapets

Rise like broken teeth

From a bloodied plain

The rattle of imperial swords

Nazi guns, NATO jets

Drowned over centuries

By the deafening sound

Of nature’s silent energy

Where powers converge

Where bodies glide

Around islets

Sister Sava flirts

To meet my Lady Dunav

 

On Kalemegdan Hill

Dogs are walked

And lovers met

There’s art for sale

The paint still wet

Where old men sleep

Where sparrows beg

More rivers flow

From pewter flasks

Rakia spills into a glass

To drink your health

Forget the past

Young Serbs strum

Old Serbian tunes

I sang with them

On an autumn day

Watching waters meet

Below Belgrade

 

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Author’s note:

My Bulgarian home is slightly more than an hour’s drive from the city of Ruse on the southern bank of the River Danube. There, the river forms the border with Romania. I go there from time to time to sit and watch it flow majestically by, in a volatile sway.

In eastern Europe we call it the Dunav, so I no longer find it easy to say Danube. If I do, I feel l am being unfaithful or disrespectful to my hosts. But whatever you want to call it, it’s a beautiful phenomenon and it just oozes history, folklore and superstition. Like some people are drawn to the sea or to mountains, I am mesmerised by this huge body of water.

Bit by bit I’ve followed it upstream to the point where it stops being Bulgarian. It’s near there that it begins its fjord-like ‘Iron Gate’ stretch where it flows for 134 kilometres through a beautiful gorge with Romania to the north and Serbia to the south. Golubac Fortress, sitting on its Serbian shore is spectacular. I’ve also visited Budapest where the river, significantly narrower at that point, separates the two old cities of Buda and Pest, and I’ve travelled along it by ferry from Vienna to Bratislava.

The Dunav rises in southern Germany and flows into the Black Sea via a wide delta in Ukraine. In Europe, only the Volga is longer. The Dunav’s biggest tributary is the Sava, rising in Slovenia and which is said to mark the northern extreme of the Balkan Peninsula. The Sava flows into the Dunav in Belgrade, so a recent visit there was a bit special for me, especially the boat trip that took in both rivers and their confluence.

While I was there (and this happens whenever I’m anywhere near the Dunav) I couldn’t stop singing the song ‘Be That Man’ written and performed by Goran Bregovic and Eugene Hütz (the latter of Gogol Bordello fame). So when some people started strumming a guitar and singing it in the park around the fortress high above the confluence, I couldn’t help but join in. Emotional, or what?

If you’d like to hear the song, here’s a link.

Be That Man

 

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Image: My own photograph of the confluence of the rivers Dunav and Sava, taken from a spot on the ancient ramparts on Belgrade’s Kalemegdan Hill.