by Ana Stjelja

O, brave women of the Bible!

Your hearts were pure,
Feet are roughened
Hurt from walking on this harsh land. 

Always fearless
And thriving for freedom
O, brave women of the Bible!
Eve, Sarah, Miriam, Esther, Deborah, Ruth, Virgin Mary, Mary Magdalene...
We are all following your trace.
We walk on a path of Love that you marked
With the blood of your wombs 
And kind words of your sweet lips.

In times when men subdued women
In times of droughts, plagues and floods
You reigned the world using your mind
Using your spirituality and wisdom. 
History will remember you 
And your names will be written down 
With an invisible hand
On hot golden sand.

You were the angels on Earth,
Sent to enlighten it,
To break the silence,
To speak out.
You were WOMEN with all the fulness of this word.
But woman is not just a word
It's a destiny
It's a path
An oath
It's a duty.
But most of all,
My Biblical mothers and sisters
Being a woman is a pride!

Ana Stjelja is a poet, writer, translator, journalist, researcher and editor from Belgrade, Serbia. In 2012, she obtained her PhD (on the life and work of the Serbian woman writer Jelena J. Dimitrijević). She published more than 30 books of different literary genres in English, Spanish, Portuguese, Slovenian, Farsi, Chinese, Arabic, Azerbaijani and Greek. She’s the Editor-in-chief of the Alia Mundi magazine for cultural diversity, online literary magazine Enheduana and Poetryzine, an online magazine for poetry in English.

In 2018, she established the Association Alia Mundi for promoting cultural diversity. She is also a regular collaborator of The Poet Magazine from England, conducting interviews with contemporary world poets, and a member of the Association of Writers of Serbia, the Association of Literary Translators of Serbia, the Association of Journalists of Serbia and the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ).