Some Damned Trouble in the Balkans

[Iolchan]

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