I cicli di Donji Vakuf

We take Emerald to Bugojno the the Opal route
to Donji vakuf where Kalashnikovs still shoot
at retreating Serbs orat the sky
to drum up the leaden beat of victory.
Once more, though this time Serbian, homes
Get pounded to façades like honeycombs.
This time it’s the Bosnian Muslims’ turn
To “cleanse” a taken town, to loot, and burn
Donji Vakuf fell last night at 11.
Victory’s signalled by firing rounds to Heaven
and for the god to whom their victory’s owed.
We see some victors cycling down the road
on bikes that they’re too big for. They feel so tall
as victors, all conveyances seem small,
but one, whose knees keep bumping on his chin,
rides a kid’s cycle, with a mandolin,
also childish size, strapped to the saddle,
joggins against him as he tries to pedal.
His machine gun and the mandolin impede
his furious pedalling, and slow down the speed
appropriate to victors, huge-limbed and big-booted,
and he’s defeated by the small bike that he’s looted.

The luckiest looters come down draging cattle,
two and three apiece they’ve won in battle.
A goat whose udder seems about to burst
squirts her milk to quench a victor’ thirst
which others quench with a shared beer, as a cow,
who,’s no idea she’s a Muslim’s now,
sprays a triumphel arch of piss across
the path of her new happy Bosnian boss.
Another struggles with stuffed rucksack, gun, and bike,
small and red, he knows his kid will like,
and he hands me his Kalashnikov to hold
to free his hands. Rain makes it wet and cold.
When he’s balanced his booty, he makes off,
for a moment forgetting his Kalashnikov,
which he slings with all his looted load
on to his shoulder, and trudges down the road
where a solitary reaper passes by,
scythe on his shoulder, wanting fields to dry,
hoping, listening to the thunder, that the day
will brighten up enough to cut his hay.

And tonight some small boy will be glad
he’s gt the present of a bike from soldier dad,
who braved the Serb artillery and fire
to bring bak a scuffed red bike with one flat tyre.
And among the thousands fleeing north, another
with all his gladness gutted, with his mother,
knowing the nightmare they are cycling in,
will miss the music of his mandolin.

(Donji Vakuf, 14 September 1995)

from: “Three Poems from Bosnia”.

Napolipoesia, 2002