The Bosnian conflict.

Some poems by Margaret O'Beirne to be found at
http://www.iol.ie/~pobeirne/mobeirne.html

The Bosnian conflict.

Bosnian Victims

Two young women shield their faces;
children again, they block out the
bogey- man as the corpses of their
men are unloaded.

On make-shift beds faces are set in pain;
burly men, now passive, view their stumps
with the wrung grimace of defeat.

Toddlers encircled in a mother's arms with
eyes that have seen not pretty things,
await some nameless horror.

A little girl, a slide in her hair,
sitting on a kerb, puckers her brow
to puzzle out why being a Muslim
means she has to leave Banja Luka.

Ethnic Cleansing

Look into that chasm
And see forever
The rape of a nation;
See the writhing mass, the crooked leers,
The brutish couplings,
Where drunken lust stalks its prey:
The Muslim mothers, wives and daughters.

Did ever fox move so stealthily
Or hungry wolf pursue its prey
As they, in clumsy uniforms
Breached our refuge, locking the door
Behind them.
After a quick review
They shared the spoils: such a
one's coveted wife, the other's
Nubile daughter;
Commanders first, others later,
In strict pecking order.

Young girls, large-eyed, ripped like
lambs from their dam,
Were sacrificed
On a rude kitchen table,
Their full horror
Caught in thrashing limb and piercing
Scream.

Night darkness was no shield for
pregnant mother or wizened age;
Like hungry wolves they
Tore the flesh, splayed
The arthritic legs, made obscene
their 'patriotic' aims as
they bayed and they brayed
In lustful revenge.

Sated, they left, the door half- hanging
from its hinges. Loud laughter carried
In the cool night air.

Droit du Seigneur

Prologue

It was a neat strategy with a single aim-
the 'cleansing' of Herzogovina :
' Kill the men and rape the women'- familiar war-cry
to the dispossessed.
Then it was that Serbian betrayed Muslim neighbour:
Forgotten the meals shared,
the kitchen chats over the filjan - all the intimacies
of community life.
Friendly neighbour became brutish enemy:
First, the muslim men were herded into lorries and
carted away, corralled like beasts and left to starve;
Then their women and children became the
Front line of battle, soft targets for the chetniks.

*****************
The Women's Chorus

"Oh where are our men now,
Our husbands and fathers,
Oh who will defend us?
The military police? No, their
shadows announce them,
They've had their orders and
are eager to enjoy,
One brutal thrust and our doors
fly open.
They reel into our kitchens with feverish eyes
And drag us, the muslim mothers and grandmothers of
Foca, our infants and dark-eyed, questioning children
To their rape camps right by the police-station.

Oh no, not my daughter, she's only twelve,
Oh remember, neighbour, our good times together.
Oh no, my little one, your snowy loins are gashed.
Now your child's treble makes a horrible babble.
This will kill your father.

Oh now are the fiends unleashed :
They bring us down, down into the abyss,
the stinking pit of darkness, strip away our modesty,
use their tools- oh shame!- on young and old,
repeatedly, in an orgy of revolting lust,
until they are sated."

*********************

Epilogue

Oh who can stifle the screams of agony
which echo forever across Herzogovina?
Who can stem the flow of tears, wash clean
the defiled bodies? Gather up the blood spilt?
Still the racing images of violation?
Who can exact atonement?

Let the screams forever echo in the ears
of their tormentors,
And pictres of torture haunt us too
Lest we forget, in our complacency.

School Bells

Artillery shells are the only bells
that call children to school in Sarajevo.
Gone now the pretty, low buildings ,
the nursery colours, the nature table.

Like young foxes they know the bolt-holes,
sniff the sniper's shot, machine-gun or
cannonfire. In wind-swept groups of four
or five they edge along their fragile way
to make-shift schools without desk or book.

Perched in descending order on a darkened stair
thin shoulders make a human desk for salvaged page
blurred maxims of a lost world: torn scraps
devoid of meaning where childhood is dead.

Sunday Salad

In Banja Luka Muslim children's faces are pinched;
even in the circle of a mother's arms the outlook
is bleak. Little ones sit on the kerb-side,
mere debris ready for the final sweep.

Images of war, like icons of style,
sell the Sundays at the corner shop.
What if they're all served up together,
tossed like a salad for a tasty treat?:

Hastily-bound stumps (close-up lens) vie with
angled shots of the beautiful people.
A trapped Muslim behind the jamb
listens for her killers not a mile away
but comfort comes on page forty with Polo Nouveau.

Actually, the lasting interest
is the impeccable art work.

The Black Cherries

An Autumn breeze played in the trees
and cherries lay ready for the reaching.
To young eyes, tired of the gloom
of a make-shift school -
plastic sheeting for windows -
the tall trees were childhood beckoning:
branches to swing from, trunks to climb,
juicy fruit to enjoy. Teta Pave, fled to
Zagreb, couldn't scold them anymore.
Kurt, Sadi, five-years-old Marija and
two or three other little truants
choosing sunlight, grass and down-reaching
branches, bent low, crawled through the broken
wall, tasted the new-found freedom in the
over-grown orchard and climbed in rival
glee to win the ripest cherries.
Thoughts of Mr. Kabul's lessons got lost
in the innocent orgy and cherry-mouths ringed
the milk-white teeth.

In the flicker of an eye-lid,
the sky screamed its warning-
too late! Too late for the cherry feasters!

The shell explodes, echoing and
reechoing its mournful cadence.
Silence comes with the dust.
Only the charry trees are garish
with scarlet fruit.

Oh nighted day! Oh evil hour!
By their fruits shall ye know them.