A few days ago in one of our hospitals died Proka Jovkic, a poet. Our public knows him from his patriotic poems of recent years which appeared in the paper Pijemont.

But that is not all what Proka Jovkic gave to us, that is not the main thing.

The most important, the most beautiful of his writings is a collection of poems published under the penname of Hector Zucni (Hector, the embittered).

Those were the poems of a rebellious worker who felt upon his own shoulders the exploitation of rough modern capitalism in America. His poetry was not of a very refined kind, but there was in it temperament, poetical force, and revolutionary spirit.

They were the first unskillful accords of a worker-poet who promised to develop into a Socialist bard. Later on life made him tame and less rebellious.

According to a certain psychological law a man living away from his Fatherland, even if not influenced by tradition, has a strange yearning for his country. Conditions in the Fatherland of today appear more lovable if you stay far away than if you right there......

When Proka Jovkic came to Belgrade, he fell for the Jugoslav ideology. He became her poet; sincere, not artful; out of exaltation and not for gain.

And yet.....such as he was, he was, not able to give all that what was in him.

Proka Jovkic -- the stock yard worker from the "jungle" so nicely portrayed by the great Socialist writer Upton Sinclair -- Proka Jovkic, as the stock yard worker...... stands high above Proka Jovkic, the Belgrade University student and patriotic poet of renown.

In later years he himself recognized and felt that little by little he approached socialism. He was preparing to gather material and ideas for a 3book about the life of immigrants in America.

Before death came to him in his last agony when the vision about a person's life is most clear, he sent an orderly to our editor's office with the message that Hector Zucni - Hector the embittered - and not Proka Jovkic, is just drinking the last cupful of the gall of life.