From deep under the surface
Something stirs
The people of this city
Experienced a tragedy
A horror so traumatizing
The city walls and store blocks
Are scarred, both inside and out

Bullet holes and burnt buildings
Cemeteries filled with graves
Tombs of those who died
When the wrath rushed through

But still it lives on,
The city filled with natives and tourists alike
People sell, people buy
People remember but still people die

It is now a historic monument
But slowly the city repairs
Revealing only a faint scab
Fixed by reality

People say they will always remember
But how long 'til the scab is gone?
Lost, inside the flesh

Minarets stand tall and sleek and
proud, announcing prayers at
intervals at odds with the
hourly bells of the basilica
Red rooves jostle for space
amid bullet-ridden history and
rejuvenated, freshly painted
homes and tourist-inducing
restaurants and market shops selling
trinkets: silk scarves, bronze pots
wooden flutes and ubiquitious
paintings of Stari Most
Crowds fill the lane leading
to the revered bridge, like pilgrims
A heady mix of peaceful
nations, short skirts
passing by headscarves
trading surreptitious glances
snapping photos of the bridge or
themselves and the bridge or
loved ones and the bridge
Watching with a rooftop drink
a bold and daring young man
small and youthful from a distance
encourages support and jumps
into the cold Neretva river
vigorously proving life goes on

at standard cruising altitude
sipping my digestive
after a quite decent hot lunch
on the flight from Vienna to Athens

I gaze through the scratched
double plexiglass bulleye
shielding me from the outside world
and try to pierce the blinding haze
of a lazy spring afternoon
hiding from me

   the people shot by snipers
   the shelling of suburbs
   the burning houses
   the crowded hospitals
   of Sarajevo, Gorazde, Mostar, Zadar ...

suspended in diffuse light
all I can see is
   the silhouette of an occasional
       snow-capped mountain range

there is no sign
of human suffering

*May 1992

Dalmatia and Other Localities before the War
When we ate grilled fish on the floating restaurant
lording it on the Dalmatian coast

...mistaken for Party children- daddy must be an
official for them to have a motor bike like that...

how cool

when we stood on the quayside at Budva then later
stranded on that hotel island watching the causeway
slowly disappear beneath an unhurried sea

when detouring to Kotor to see the earthquake damage
imagining the earth move a dust shrouded town
staring through chained gates as if at a movie set

when I drove the Honda too fast skidding around
potholes and you giggled later drinking rocket fuel
local liqueurs in a bar with currency for wall paper

then when we strolled the leaning streets of
Mostar where soon there would be tanks
Then what of our own smouldering conflict

our own trajectory of spite filled ordnance
could you sense that it was coming?
a nurtured, carefully concealed attack

time worn sophistry
what of that when gun smoke
smarts your eyes.

A rainbow arcs, between

                           the blue sky and a green

                           Neretva, pencil minarets
                          
                         etch silhouettes, of Nimbus.

Handshake

Extended arms overcome to reconcile
what was once divided and separated.

Perhaps one or both has to reach out
further, even to a protracted cantilever.

Age, tradition and culture arch backs
but a bow does not mean genuflection.

Traversing a span to overcome and reach
beyond voids of indifference takes ingenuity.

That which connects links of a chain
straddling the sprocket, is a split pin.

The cross of Calvary did not vex Jesus but
we let anger obliterate our viaducts of life.

Yet rehabilitation is achievable, 427 years
of damaged history was restored at Mostar.

=============  ==============
                           \

Kerch attack is a Crime-a new Mostar

but just as UNESCO bridged that gap,

Vladimir Putin will overcome NATO’s

intention to overwhelm Mother Russia.