Looking for Byzantium by Mark E.

Harden

this too, is no country for old men…

only the women seem to age,
wizened and stooped,
they sweep at their shadows on the sand-
the dunes loom large, then drift deep
into the darkness…

I am back again, patrolling the bypass

that skirts the city, and leads away
from the university’s scorched, empty lecture halls,

avoiding the shattered Central Bank of Somalia,

Semper Fi slashed in red across its coral limestone walls,

the market is vacant,

the windmills are still-

I keep my grief at a distance

as I travel east,
toward the Old Port,
in search of Yeat’s dolphin torn,
gong tormented sea…
IN AN UNDERGROUND BUNKER
Eagle Base NATO Camp, Tuzla, Bosnia and Herzegovina, March 1999
by Christine Leche

I must admit I trembled

as the Sergeant 1st Class
steered us deeper, nervous,
repeating, this is the real thing,
counting our camouflaged arms
as we sunk into darkness,
settled in, a rattle of M-16s
and combat boots deep
in a room of sandbagged
ceiling and walls.
Over our heads a sky of Serbian MiGs
roared under the locked-in stars.
I must admit I wanted clarity
when the soldier’s hand-held radio
cackled undecipherable words. A disembodied
voice in the pitch black said, this is Dragon, bunker 23,
come in Roadster this is Dragon. . . come in come in…
.
Nothing.
Someone asked for a Tylenol
and got it. A quick circle of light
flicked over the field of our faces,
a low buzz praised the soldier
wielding a flashlight who laughed
that he was a gone crazy sun.
Then SOME body called him
a smart ass God. SOME
body else said shhhhh.
The Sergeant said
At ease.
In the bunker some knew
the comfortable luxury of faith.
A fervent Private said he, for one,
believed in our Air Force, the power
of F-15s to shootem all down.
A voice wanted some water.
Another said there was none.
A black soldier held his black
hand out in the black, palm up,
traced the lighter line of his life
with a finger, how long it ran,
a thread he hoped would hold.
And perhaps it was St. John
himself whose watery hands
moved through the women
and men bathing their
dutiful faces in sweat.
OK, OK, I was a coward in the bunker.
Believing too much in myself
to believe, I crossed my arms
across my chest and held,
leaned against the shifting
bags of sand that gave
like stacks of human backs.
There were broken
threads, words wrapped
in radio static
we tried to follow—
five MiGs forty-five seconds
away, then two shot down.
A rumpled notepad
came to my hand in the dark,
a soldier clicked on a flashlight
that shook over a faint blue line,
sign here, he said, in case
we don’t make it. Accountability
of those in the bunker tonight---
Packed together in the slippery heat,
we were the BORN-again and
the UN-born all UN-safe.
And then the siren’s pulsing wails,
the all clear sounding through Tuzla Camp,
a yell of renewed life postponing again
the end of the world, which, if we

chose to believe it, just might last forever.