Some Damned Trouble in the Balkans
I heard a high wild whine of pipes
Already old when Man was weaned,Upon the high, and Scythian steppes;The one who played the tape explainedThese were Bulgarian bagpipe tunes.
Still sitting civil in the Room,A curtain opened on the SeaWhere Macedonia does Loom.
Northward, I saw the Bosnian plain,Where Serbs and Croats, dignified,Were dressed in Sunday suits; their best.
Fading, I saw an ancient Wild: deep,Dark, of mountainous tangled woods,Where Women of King Phillip’s race,Though bronzed by Turkish centuries,Of the Primordial type, roamed free…Remained; and where the mountain Goat,
His Eye, a Wonderment of fire,Was barbarous as the pipes of Pan,Whose notes did pierce my ear.
And Then, I heard the canny wordsOf some old diplomat - a German -
(He had long ago entered rest;)About, what bodes it, if I jest;Lit tinder will burn, if it can:“Some damned troublein the Balkans.”
***
Mark Walter Evans,1979Mendocino,