I remember your city before you were born.
Winter nineteen ninety-one, the skies grey,
the air tense with rumours of war, the whiff
of cordite floating in from Croation battlefronts.
A brief ray of hope through the clouds, the
Sarajevo Accords of New Year's nineteen ninety-two,
sealing (ah, foolish hope) yet another peace
between Serbs and Croats. That hope shattered
in the gunfire of that cruellest April,
scattering the habirues of the sidewalk cafes
to the bleeding barricades, the dull thud
of artillery shells slamming into your city
from the ring of hills surrounding your parents.
Sarajevo, capital of Europe.

I remember your city before you were born.
The siege. The plangent whine
of the sniper's random bullet
penetrating the heart, the mind, of Sarajevo.
Shell-shock. Nineteen ninety-two and three, mobilization,
the tramp of mud-caked boots through the streets
of your Olympic city. January nineteen ninety-four,
the indelible screams of mothers at the marketplace,
dismembered limbs filling their shopping baskets
at Markale. Sarajevo, city of the exclusion zone,
filling with refugees, spies, advisers, smugglers,
United Nations peace-keepers
sent in to keep a peace no one could make,
Sarajevo, capital of Europe.

I remember your city before you were born.
The tunnel under the airport, fleeing women irradiated
by the searchlights as they tried to cross the runway,
blood irrigating the vegetable gardens of Dobrinje,
Sarajevo, a city pockmarked by hate, scarred
by the tracks of armored personnel carriers,
divided by barriers of blood. I remember
flying in over destroyed buildings, putting on my blue
helmet and ill-fitting Kevlar flak jacket,
stepping off the musty UNPROFOR Yak-40 and walking
across the tarmac, an armored firetruck driving slowly
between us and the silent snipers.
Your refugee parents knew no such security in Sarajevo.
Sarajevo, capital of Europe.