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HOMÉ

On the Kosov@ War of 1999

In this section was are presenting creative expressions by Western poets, Kosovar Albanians and Serbian artists, on the on-going tragic events concerning the continuing disintegration of former Yugoslavia.

(L) Poster by the Serbian art group, Art Rat (Art War); (R) Image from a Kosovar Albanian web stie: http://www.kosova.nu

"Kosovo was a truly postmodern war, an Oscar-winning action movie, a new 3D-computer game where one can employ emotion and skill, and even be morally rewarded for defeating the Evil-without risking one's life. However, there was blood behind the screens. There is a story by Borges in which two kings play chess on a hilltop; at the bottom of the hill, two armies are fighting in accordance with the moves on the chessboard. One king gains the upper hand, and so does one of the armies. As the winning player declares checkmate, the other falls dead.

Postmodernism is an entertaining game on a computer screen, or on the chessboard, but, to our sheer confusion, there happen to be real people somewhere underneath. The more virtual a game becomes for "us," the harder it turns out for "them." The safer is an American pilot's flight in the high-tech skies over Kosovo, the bloodier the mess on the ground (both from bombs and ethnic cleansing). The bigger the speculative flows on global financial markets, trading in virtuality, the bitterer are conditions for the "real" economy in the Third World. Calls for curing the injustices brought on by global interdependence, such as making NATO answerable to the UN, or imposing the 1-percent "Tobin tax" on global speculative transactions, will hardly change the fundamentally post-moral nature of the New World Order. We thought that ketchup simulating blood in movies and burgers would eventually replace the blood in the veins of postmodernity, but it has not. Catch up, ketchup." --Sergei Medvedev: "Kosovo: A European Fin-de-Siecle," Ctheory: Theory, Technology and Culture, VOl. 22, No. 3. Artice 74[1], 99/09/29.

Poems on the Kosov@ War

The Chilling Frenzy of the War #2 the danube yes that danube burning today belgrade on its knees and our conscience no longer clear now the shadow of a gesture threatening the song is not alone the danube's burning the bridges broken bent over in proud reportages nervous radio control errors and horrors this hatred that governs us we watch the spectacle a body here a remote-click there what a show we watch the spectacle: this, then, our legacy: crimes again and again at this millennium's end springtime March the gardens the rain the muck kosovo, serbia cleansing and bombs this western will americanly european with cleanliness! ah, the west sluggish but unbroken energies begin again under the weight of our better intelligence intelligent apocalypse how to go on with this howl? tears, blood and tears the trees can't grow on our idiocy! -Anna Lombardo (Translated from Italian by Jack Hirschman) Anna Lombardo lives in Marghera, near Venice, Italy.

What is What is this silence suspended in nothingness when what follows can explode a bomb or a lie or a televized skater or an exultation of video games- an intense silence and then the polluting rain of hypocrisy elaborated over many years in mass communications as well and in the controlled style of what has the power of a fist to the face of international law the U. N., Constitutions and the most elementary sense of human dignity. With a controlled silence and swelling with anxiety here's the opinion of someone who perhaps values you and says to you that he agrees -you agree with a massacre? you say, and he says no, it's to defend the people. my God! enough! let's begin again to use the heart. From sorrowful silence and desperate rage may there be an explosion of dignity for us and respect for what's human let's spread wide our arms so that brothers gather, the criminal agreements dissolve, the assassins get their due. -Mariella Setzu (Translated from Italian by Jack Hirschman)   Mariella Setzu lives in Cagliari (Sardinia).

The Road into Kosovo In a bar on the road into Kosovo, a soldier plunked down his last 50 Deutschmarks, not expecting to live 'til morning. He bought steak dinners for his regiment, flirted with the (Serb) barmaid. He lived to tell it all to the tabloids when, a week later, the tanks rolled down past the bar, which was out of steak butrich with blood; all of this on the road, one lane in either direction, no mines within sight, right, into Kosovo. - Michael Wendling Michael Wending is a journalist working for a news-wire service in Cleveland, Ohio. At Twelve in Belgrade (1999) You still want to hear a bedtime story, with open eyes, and taste all the flavors from the worldıs kitchen, but outside the door, a bomb goes off, grazing you, and you hide from the sky, fear floods your body, you donıt want to be disfigured, not today. - B. Z. Niditch B. Z. Niditch is a poet, playwright and teacher. He lives in Brookline, MA.