Knin Eclogue

Out of the ten-kilometre tunnel, I was gradually

Spooked when we rose and rose into the high Lika

After its moonscape barrens: karst and mists, desolate

Woods infracted with burnt glades of spring pasture;

A thin line of gold foil threading its dark mirror

To dunes of a blood-orange sundown. The houses

Everywhere boarded-up but untouched, no beasts

Or ricks in the fields, no house-lights or vehicles,

Only a dimly-lit neighbour in the emptied hamlet

Where the horsemen passed by. Dark Orthodox

Domes, pockmarked, inhabiting a fairy-tale desolation

Unleashed by Croatian armour; here and there

One returnee's outpost of entrepreneurial neon

New-shafting the gloom along Europa’s fresh tarmac.

Someday, grief-struck, a world-after-us might look like this.