BELGRADE, LATE 1999

A terrible memory
of living bombs
in orange remembrance
of the air's flesh
leaning on human footprints
of the solitary earth
a city's face turns pale blue
and overnight a river
floods a violent brown
by winter's cold eye
to lean on your land
with empty chairs
unwitnessed by the world
notched out of echoes
and screams
from lapses of timeless dawns
where the rain shadows trees
and moving children
roll away behind stones
in a mountainous inheritance
of assassin's mourning
on a thousand bandages
in deserted stations.