Riddles

Riddles by Vasko Popa

Most of January I was on Lanzarote. I was unwell, so I spent much of my time reading in the Piano Bar of the hotel. Here is a view from the balcony. In the distance is Fuerteventura.

I forgot all about posting the answers to Vasko Popa’s riddles which I posted in December. The riddles are from his collection The Golden Apple, 2010. It’s a round of stories, songs, spells, proverbs & riddles that Popa himself selected from various anthologies of Serbo-Croatian folk literature. Here are the riddles, their answers, and another riddle by Popa.

Riddles

1. In one room both bone and flesh grow.

2. I stretched a gold thread through the wide world and wound it up into a walnut shell.

3. I shake a tree here, but the fruit falls half an hour away

Answers

1 Egg

2 Eyesight

3 The sound of a bell

Riddle

With an iron key

I open a green fortress

And drive out the black cattle