This next one is also a kind of autobiographical poem.
It's later on, written later on.
But actually, the events described are--
I think there's even a date in the poem,
so I don't have to tell you.
And in the poem I talk about a Roman graveyard,
a Roman graveyard, and it later on struck me
that this sounds like, I mean, Italy or something.
But Balkans are just full of old Roman graveyards.
I mean, Romans were there.
There was this sort of an old classic Roman graveyard
nearby where I lived.
The poem is called Prodigy.
I grew up bent over a chessboard.
I love the word endgame.
All my cousins looked worried.
It was a small house near a Roman graveyard.
Planes and tanks shook its window panes.
A retired professor of astronomy taught me how to play.
That must have been in 1944.
In the set we were using, the paint
had almost chipped off the black pieces.
The white king was missing and had to be substituted for.
I'm told but do not believe that that summer I witnessed
men hung from telephone poles.
I remember my mother blindfolded me a lot.
She had a way of tucking my head suddenly under her overcoat.
In chess too, the professor told me,
the masters played blindfolded, the great ones
on several boards at the same time.