I took a train in the opposite direction.
Sleeping in a high-rise block,
seven floors up, downtown Belgrade;
across the street, the Bank of Serbia
still bombed out after NATO strikes;
over the palace of justice, a woman with a blind fold,
diamonds on one side of the scale, mulberries on the other.
Everything’s made of the same particles —
quarks, leptons, neutrinos — but mulberries are not diamonds.
The man who cut off my father’s ears
isn’t the man who set fire to St. Nepo’s.
Sometimes I have an urge to string up a few chickens.
But that’s Dicky’s job — or his daughter’s.
Elvira takes care of the sharp end of things.
Tight as a magpie, Dicky was a man for backroom deals.
Cold, practical, efficient. Unique in the Balkans:
he didn’t like martyrs or forked lightning.
After ten years for war crimes,
he went straight back to business;
monkey business —
a landslide victory,
mayor of his hometown;
now he’s on the run again,
there’s a warrant out for his arrest —
abuse of public funds. Elvira has taken the reins,
first Madam President of the Supreme Council of Chickens —
progress of a sort;
when one empire dissolves another strikes back.
One man’s yoke is another man’s omelette.
The chicken or the egg.
When you’re born into this mess,
I guess you keep pecking.
Laurence O’Dwyer | Tito was a good man (1977)
Contents | Mudlark No. 75 (2023)