Echo of a pistol shot

I have wanted to see Sarajevo since reading Lawrence Durrell's poem in the 1970s which I append below.

But that poem turned out to be not just historically sharp but also strangely prophetic because in the 90s it was the echo of sniper and artillery shots that framed the city in the world's conscience with the longest siege in modern history. Many buildings still bear bullet and shell damage . Many thousands died.

It has rebuilt , physically at least , and this evening in the unusual early autumn warmth it was beautiful and beguiling with endless brightly lit cafes open to the breeze and the casual conversation of stylishly dressed young and older people. It is no longer , and probably never was, the village of Durrell's imagination but it is still a poignant place with remembered scars of world shaming violence on more street corners than this.

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Sarajevo

Lawrence Durrell

Bosnia. November. And the mountain roads
Earthbound but matching perfectly these long
And passionate self-communings counter-march,
Balanced on scarps of trap, ramble or blunder
Over traverses of cloud: and here they move,
Mule-teams like insects harnessed by a bell
Upon the leaf-edge of a winter sky,

And down at last into this lap of stone
Between four cataracts of rock: a town
Peopled by sleepy eagles, whispering only
Of the sunburnt herdsman’s hopeless ploy:
A sterile earth quickened by shards of rock
Where nothing grows, not even in his sleep,

Where minarets have twisted up like sugar
And a river, curdled with blond ice, drives on
Tinkling among the mule-teams and the mountaineers,
Under the bridges and the wooden trellises
Which tame the air and promise us a peace
Harmless with nightingales. None are singing now.

No history much? Perhaps. Only this ominous
Dark beauty flowering under veils,
Trapped in the spectrum of a dying style:
A village like an instinct left to rust,
Composed around the echo of a pistol-shot.

From Faber and Faber’s 1985 edition of Lawrence Durrell’s Collected Poems: 1931-1974.