One Hundred Years in Sarajevo

Sarajevo, 1984  

It was a moment of hope.
She had been a mystery for a generation,

A forgotten vortex of conflict

Hidden from the “free world”

Behind the cloak of a communist regime.

It was a winter of joy

As the Olympic Games unfolded

In a land that had become exotic by her absence

From the world stage of events.

Now that land was hopeful with her reentry,

Standing center stage in the grand beauty and pageantry

Of peaceful games.

Yet in that moment
She stood less than a decade away

From the devastation that would come.
The unraveling occurred from 1992 to 1995;

11,000 lives would be lost

Due to deeply divided loyalties

And the ripping away

Of the thin veneer of civilization

That had been her glory.

In that same moment
She also stood but seven decades beyond

The unyielding and tragic events

That had brought untold misery to a continent

And violence on a scale unseen until that time.

Shots fired by a young Bosnian Serb in 1914

Began “The Great War,” “The War to End All Wars.”

Labels for that war were cruel and hopeful

Like language that sidesteps reality

To numb the living.

The world saw 17 million deaths,

20 million more wounded

And the ripping away

Of the thin veneer of civilization

That had been the world’s hope.

Now in this moment –
Twenty years after the Bosnian War,
Thirty years after those hopeful games,
One hundred years after the outbreak of world war–
What stories does she foretell?

How long will people suffer

The dread of war?

How soon will we see yet again

The ripping away

Of the thin veneer of civilization

That has been our only solace?

                             ~ Charles Kinnaird

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Photo: Sarajevo View

Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

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