Iolchan
09-16-2011, 09:31 AM
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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 explained
These were Bulgarian bagpipe tunes.
Still sitting civil in the Room,
A curtain opened on the Sea
Where 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,
Remained; and where the mountain Goat,
Of the Primordial type, roamed free…
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 words
Of 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 trouble
in the Balkans.”
***
Mark Walter Evans,
Mendocino,
1979
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 explained
These were Bulgarian bagpipe tunes.
Still sitting civil in the Room,
A curtain opened on the Sea
Where 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,
Remained; and where the mountain Goat,
Of the Primordial type, roamed free…
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 words
Of 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 trouble
in the Balkans.”
***
Mark Walter Evans,
Mendocino,
1979