The Bright Lights of Sarajevo – Tony Harrison

This powerful poem has its setting in the chilling siege of Sarajevo during the
Bosnian War of the mid-1990s.

The poet uses one night in the city to present an unvarnished, graphic recount of
the horrors of war that lay claim to the lives of the city’s innocent civilians.
However, interspersed through the tragedy is an undercurrent of hope, that takes
shape in the form of a blossoming romance between two youths.

The title of the poem evokes a positive response in the reader, and the use of
‘bright’ could suggest that despite the hardships the city is facing, there is still hope
for its inhabitants in the form of a similarly ‘bright’ future.

The poem is written in three stanzas of unequal length, and follows a strict rhyme
scheme, where every couplet shares a rhyme. The poem also makes skillful use
of enjambment, to mimic the narration of a story.

The poet’s careful use of structure and rhyme is not accidental. He uses the first
stanza to exclusively talk about the grim, bitter realities of life in the war-torn city. The
second stanza introduces the story of the budding romance, and the third stanza
(which is the shortest) concludes on a very hopeful bend. Thus, the mood of the
poem moves from negative to positive.

Similarly, by using rhyme (which often brings a light-hearted spin to poetry) in a

poem that deals with such grim subject matter, the poet is subtly reminding the
reader that there is still joy and positivity to be found during times of despair.

In the first stanza, the poet pays tribute to the trials the ordinary civilians were
facing. He uses powerful language to show how the people were struggling to
obtain their daily necessities. Fuel (canisters of gas) was wheeled home in prams,
suggesting that they were as precious as children. Obtaining a few meagre grams of
bread was akin to a death sentence (‘dodging snipers on the way’), and procuring
water involved hard physical labour. ‘Grams of bread’ suggests that bread was
treated like gold (as gold is often weighed in grams). The use of strong verbs like
‘queuing, struggling and dodging’ add emphasis to the situation being portrayed.

A switch to the second person ‘You’d think’ personally invests the reader in the
story that is then to be recounted. The poet recounts the defiant resistance against
oppression the youth of the city are showcasing.

In spite of the danger of living in a conflict zone, young men and women still wish to
go out, socialise and enjoy the company of their peers. The poet does not criticise or
condemn these actions; on the contrary, he seems to admire and be inspired by the
resolve and courage of the resistance, as his careful use of language shows.
The repeated use of ‘stroller’ to describe the walker’s gaits and the alliteration in
‘stroller’s stride’ suggest that the young people are carefree and unhurried. In the
dark, all ethnic tensions are eliminated, as it is impossible to tell who is who. The0
poet stresses this by including three translations of bread in the native tongues of the
Sarajevans; emphasising that in the dark and quiet, ambiguity reigns.

The poet then details the unusual courtship rituals that would take place. A boy
would pretend to collide with a girl as a ‘flirtatious ploy’, and based on her verbal
response, would use a match or lighter to identify themselves and take things
further.

The act of the courtship, which has an elaborate choreography, coupled with
the ominous use of language (‘dark shape’, ‘tender radar’) shows the poet is aware
of the irony at play. The courtship ritual brings to mind a military operation, which
painfully reflects the reality of its setting.

In the next stanza, the poet intersperses a personal eye-witness account of such
a romance with the grim events of years past. The poet details the couple moving
away from the site of a gruesome massacre- and his use of language could
imply metaphorical hope for the future (as in the young leaving behind the
tragedies of war).

He uses detailed, graphic language to reinforce the tragedy that took place. By
bringing attention to the innocent civilians who died while they were waiting for their
food (‘blood-dunked crusts’, ‘broken dead’), the poet effectively calls out
the callousness of the perpetrators of such war-crimes.

The mention of rain, and its eventual passing to reveal a star-lit sky, brings to mind
tears and the eventual passing away of sorrow to give brighter eyes. The poet is
once again drawing out parallels of hope with his use of words.

The poet’s serene description of Nature, reinforced with mention of the Pleaides
(which are a cluster of stars visible to the naked eye), also draws
sharp contrasts with the horrific violence perpetrated by man. The poet resumes an
ominous stance by commenting that the weather conditions were ideal for a bombing
to take place.

The poem ends on its shortest stanza, which paints a picture of tenderness and
care. The repeated alliteration in the line of ‘coffee in a candle-lit café’ as well as the
mention of ‘sharing’ and ‘holding hands’, brings to mind connotations of traditional
romance. In doing so, the poet ends on a hopeful note of events turning over for the
better, and civilian life resuming its normal due course.
This poem is full of juxtapositions of light and dark, war and peace, hatred and love and
ultimately of death and love as embodied in the final tentative triumph of Eros found in the
last lines.

It is set in a specific location: Sarajevo after 1992, during the summer months and at night.
This allows Harrison to play with the juxtapositions outlined above. Night time is a time not
of war but of peace – ‘the young go walking at a strollers pace’ suggesting a new relaxation
following a day spent ‘dodging snipers’ yet as awe learn in stanza 2, the ‘clouds have cleared
away’ leaving the contradiction of the beauty of a ‘star filled sky’ which allows bombing runs
to take place and thus replace the small scale death of a sniper with the potential mass
destruction of war from the air.

Harrison further uses the setting to explore the racial and sectarian tension at the heart of this
most vicious civil war: darkness allows anonymity as the ‘black shapes’ can not be defined
by their religion of nationality – ‘Muslim, Serb or Croat’ – and although the various
languages calling out for food are still discernible, it is not possible to attach a voice to a
shape. All this suggests that night is now a time of relative sanctuary. Into this world, another
inversion is placed – lovers using the ‘tender radar of tone of voice’ to locate each other.
Harrison suggests that in time the instruments of war will become part of the arsenal of love
and therefore of peace, as long as the individuals, such as the pair in this poem, continue to
thrive.

This ability to replace the war is shown in the second stanza as the lovers feet walk the
scarred paving stones – the city personified to bear wounds itself from the attacks – and
rainwater fills the shell holes acting as a natural purification rite for the dead and wounded in
the ‘massacre’ which Harrison describes vividly, the ‘blood-dunked crusts of shredded bread’
acting as a replacement for the dead and wounded by means of synecdoche.

As Harrison moves from the public face of the city to the ironically romantic setting of a
‘candlelit cafe’, we focus on the lovers – anonymous perhaps even to each other: a ‘boy-
shape’ and a ‘girl-shape’- given no names or identifiers in order to maintain the idea of
anonymous safety already established. In the relative safety created by the re-use of AID
sacks they hold hands in a version of normality which suggests hope for the future – the true
bright lights of Sarajevo.

However the journey to find this pair begins at the start of the poem with Harrison
referencing the hardship of the whole town – prams are re-used as shopping trolleys in a
world with no power and little food. Bread is rationed in ‘meagre grams’ and even water has
to be brought in from street stand pumps. The verbs suggest the hardship throughout the first
lines of the poem: queuing (repeated), rationed, struggle, dodging (snipers) all suggest a life
of hardship. At this point Harrison addresses his readers directly to introduce the unexpected
revelation that night time brings relief: strollers, flirtatious,fancied, tender. Harrison is clear
that ‘the young’ are the hope for the future. It is they who seek the hope of a night-time of
possibility – even one in which Death still stands close at hand. The young meet and the
simple act of lighting a cigarette becomes loaded with new significance for the boy-shape –
the first chance to see the figure to whom he is speaking.

Harrison’s first person narrative places him in the poem as a voyeur of all which is happening
and as a war-correspondent he reports what he sees with a poetic diction which does not
cloud the clarity of his vision. He uses compound nouns throughout, lending the poem an
archaic tone like the kennings of Anglo-Saxon writing or the language of Aeschylus, possibly
a subtle hint at the possible longevity of the society which might emerge from this dystopian
vision of a city. It is he who notices the detail of the location – the market place and the detail
of the emerging stars, surely symbols of hope and peace, although as ever in this poem,
tainted with the ideas of death. As they move towards the cafe, Harrison’s language becomes
ever more poetic: ‘fragments of the splintered Pleiades, sprinkled on those death-deep, death-
dark wells’ as the boy sees the beauty of the sky ‘splintered’ in holes left by Serb shells – the
war has had the power to damage the very cosmos, yet love will still manage to survive. The
two kennings ‘death-deep’ and ‘death-dark’ -compound adjectives both, serve to suggest the
enormity and the power of the forces ranged against love in this poem – shell holes become
‘wells’ suggesting an immense depth, as though descending into the grave, albeit with a
solemn beauty which suggests a lack of fear.

We notice that it is the male who ‘leads’ the girl away to the cafe. This allows him to adopt
the traditional male role of protector. She is now his property – he holds her hand -either a
tender gesture or a gesture based on fear of losing her and thus losing hope for the future. In
this war many hundreds of thousands of souls were led away to be slaughtered as part of the
ethnic cleansing undertaken by both sides – how good to see the verb being used here
positively.

The poem is written in a rhymed iambic pentameter – some lines are longer, some shorter,
but the thread remains audible throughout a reading of the poem. This use of rhyming
couplets in iambic form is a verse pattern called ‘heroic couplets’ – Harrison does not need to
express his open admiration for the heroes at the centre of the poem, his form does it for him
– the citizens of the city are the clear heroes of this tale. In addition, the iambic pentameter is
often likened to a human heart beat and this also carries resonance for me in this poem. At
times the heart races – 13 syllables in ‘but to night in Sarajevo that’s just not the case’
possibly suggesting the increase in excitement as night falls and a certain freedom is to be
found – and at times the heart falters – ‘black shapes impossible to mark’ has only 8 syllables
possibly allowing us a slight pause due to the gap in the meter at the end of the line as we
peer closely to try to see more detail,in those around us. Harrison used enjambment here to
link to the next line, but the pause is built in perhaps to show the hesitation demanded in such
a dangerous environment. Sentences are long – the first alone covers 16 lines as Harrison
establishes his setting and presents his inversion – ‘After the hours… then you’d think…but
tonight’. He addresses his readers directly and offers reportage with a difference.

In this poem the world of Duffy’s war photographer, Alagiah’s Passage to Africa and
Harrison’s reporting merge. All are creating images of war for public consumption. The
photographer is hostage to his editors who seek ever more lurid images from the disaster
zone, Alagiah likens reporters to ghouls, literally feeding off the victims of famine – Harrison
is able to move beyond this – he is a poet. He reports what he sees but can invest his poem
with layers of subtext far beyond the photograph or the news report. He can present ‘ideas’.
His central idea is that even here, in an earthly Hell, Eros can trump Thanatos and we can
find hope for the future, lit by a candle and desperately fragile, but hope nonetheless.