Long Kosovo Poems

Holocaust Poem: "On The Slaughter of the Jews"
by Chaim Nachman Bialik
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Merciful heavens, have pity on me!
If there is a God approachable by men
as yet I have not found him—
Pray for...

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LEST WE FORGET!


                                ...

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I wore these boots for two decades.Whether shiny black or desert tan.
Through sun and snow, soaking wet or frozen solid.
Dusty dry or so muddy it was an effort to move each leg forward.
But always moving...

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Edina's life story is worthy of being told with sympathy, 
she was a refugee from worn-torn Kosovo breathing
an air frosted by the harsh wind of January;
she escaped from an abusive father named Bojan
when her town...

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NATO


The secretary general of NATO is a Norwegian 
and as most Norwegian's pro-American
and probably selected for his fidelity
He is a tall thin man, likes to run in the woods
and has been observed saluting them while talking
to his...

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I

School bag, blue shirt, hair parted on the right,
Dal-rice, clock ticking away in delight;
Cycles stop, wagons with seasonal crop, 
Get to her class before the gates shut tight.

II

The obsession froths beyond the eavesdrop,
Secrecy brews a...

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THE Big Con of a Peace Prize 

And there they are the leaders of EU receiving 
a prize they do not deserve, the only thing they
have rescued are banks and the people are 
paying the...

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Our dreams begin to open on the ninth floor
of the Marines Memorial Hotel.
Clean tombs equipped with all that is needed
for a weekend to die for.
Guests view what they can see at their level.
Flags wave from...

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My pools of words are not limited to English.
I was a missionary in France and Belgium, so learned French.
I studied Spanish in college for several years afterwards.
The US Army had me learn Russian during the...

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Tomorrow

 
If tomorrow I’ll be late for a coffee to "The Greek"
Do not wait
Above Olympus of pain I make portrait of Mother
In the loneliness I knit nostalgic mosaic of Father's
To the Children we build together...

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JESSE JACKSON - KOSOVO MISSION
         Belgrade, 1999
They thought to the west 
and the homes they all knew
in a meloncholy dark and blue,
these three of a kind on...

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How can we forget this war, when no one knows anything about it?
      KOSOVO - the sniper
He hides behind the dirty window pane
with eyes all cold and void of any...

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Kosovo means a ‘field of blackbirds’
From a Serbian place-name
The centre of a medieval Serbian empire
Assembly of Kosovo declared independence
17 February 2008 they win
It doesn't violate the law and not a sin
They are Albanians and Serbs

Sulu...

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Correspondence

 
...in Kosova, instead of my dream, I found a grave in which I place flowers every weekend ... 

Islam Morina

(A friend who went back from Denmark in Kosovo immediately after the war on 1999...

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KOSOVO DREAM
Don't worry little girl, you need not cry,
we know your tears, and feel them every one
and all too well, though many have to die,
you will go home again, it is not gone,

but merely re-arranged,...

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DREAMS OF A  KOSOVO GIRL
        KOSOVO 1999
Can you tell me where my friends have gone?
I've so many things I have to share
of rock guitar, and building on
a...

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KOSOVO - THE GRANDMER
If you could feel the pain of hunger's bite
that eats away at her, and made her old
wearing the rain drenched cloths both day and night
and holding someone just to fight the cold;

perhaps...

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RETURN TO KOSOVO

She's thought about where she's been
considering what she's seen,
the years have been drained of memory,
tomorrow is just what will be.

She's tried to find yesterday
and wondered if it's ok,
or is it still burning like...

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