-to Slobodan, with thanks to Lucille Clifton
Listen when I tell you:
The Lord God of hosts
weeps as your children,
the children of Bosnia,
die as you dine without hunger
in the placid detachment of Dayton.
___Destroyer of worlds, you have become
the death of the nameless, the faceless
skeletons buried in rags under mounds
of earth. Mountains of denial
issued while you dared smile
a diplomat's smile.
___In the meantime,
the Lord of loaves and fishes
will not accept,
will not transubstantiate
the blood of his children into the wine
with which you celebrate victory.
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