THE BLACKBIRD OF KOSOVO
The poems and photos presented here are direct and sensitive expressions of the author's experience in establishing a personal, living relationship with the people whose lives he records. This is not the usual book of poetry and images through which an author presents his view of the world. Rather, it is fashioned to give voice to the voiceless, and done so through the author's commitment to live with, partake of, the people who speak through him. What is recorded are the lives of a people struggling in the midst of ethnic cleansing, persecution, discrimination, poverty and joblessness to maintain their dignity and unique, centuries-old culture and identity.
HEAVEN AND HELL
The closest I've been
to seeing a heavenly glow
was watching the moon
come up
over the tiled roof
of a Gypsy home
in Preoce.
The closest the inhabitants of that house have been to seeing the fires of hell, was when NATO bombed their backyard.
As with many million dollar missiles, that one did not explode.
It only killed
an old rooster
that wouldn't stop crowing
at three o'clock
in the morning.
It's not always bad to have America bomb your backyard.
HIDDEN GARBAGE
A homeless Gypsy
asked me to drive him
to his former village
where all the Romani homes
had been burned.
He wanted to see
if the Albanians
had also destroyed
his father's tombstone.
The Romani graves were by the village dump. Plastic bottles, tin cans, discarded stoves and fridges lay everywhere. Although the Roma were Muslims like the Albanians, the Gypsies were only allowed to bury their dead by the dump.
I sat in the car while my passenger struggled through the tall grass to his father's grave.
A few minutes later four Albanian men drove up and stopped beside my van. "What are you doing?" they demanded.
"I'm here to drop off my garbage," I replied.
They nodded, then drove off without seeing my garbage hiding in the weeds.
A SATURDAY MORNING IN KOSOVO
Sitting on an empty beer crate
under a Serb's dried-up plum tree,
I watched Elvis,
an eight-year-old Gypsy,
chase his cousins
with a live frog.
Elvis had tied a string to one of the frog's hind legs and was swinging it around as the children screamed, "Vampire!"
All the adults laughed
except Elvis' grandfather
who yelled at his unshaven, middle-aged sons
to hitch up their horse and wagon
and drive him
to the post office,
to collect his pension before the Albanians stole it to buy more hand grenades to throw at them.
REWIEW
At a reading Paul gave at City Lights in San Francisco for the journal Left Curve, which I edit, he invited me to come with him to Kosovo in June. I had no idea what to expect. As it turned out, the trip etched vivid, indelible images and impressions into my mind, along with a deep admiration for Paul's selfless dedication to the cause of the Romani people.
Paul picked me up at Prague airport on June 3 with a van that had been donated for his humanitarian work. We left for Kosovo as soon as I got off the plane, driving non-stop for 25 straight hours through the Czech Republic, Austria, Slovenia, Croatia and down the winding, often treacherous, road of the Dalmatian coast to Dubrovnik, where we stayed only one night. We took off again the following evening, driving into the full moon-lit night through Montenegro.
After an attempted night's rest by the edge of a bay, interrupted by two Montenegrin cops who got in and out of the van and tinkered with the radio to relieve their boredom from stopping and checking the few cars that drove by, we finally descended from the mountains of Montenegro into the smog-filled valley of Kosovo by the middle of the following day. Our descent down the largely dirt road was still pock-marked by bomb craters and periodically littered with burned out, rusted husks of passenger buses. The charred, twisted, metal skeletons lay as mute, grim sentinels to the returning Albanians' vengeance extracted against the fleeing Serbs and Roma after the end of the NATO war.
By early evening, we finally arrived at the home of the Romani family where we were to stay in the village of Preoce. As we drove over the bumpy dirt road of the village, past a muddy, cooper-colored stagnant stream filled with junk and garbage, I could see people stopping and staring at the strange sight of a big American van in their Gypsy village. Very soon, several dozen adults and many more children began to run alongside the van with a growing crescendo of, "Mr. Paul! Mr. Paul! Mr. Paul!," escorting us the final few hundred meters ofour journey. It was a spontaneous, heartwarming welcome such as I had never experienced. When Paul got out of the van, he began to hand out vitamin C candies to the many children that had gathered all around him. The sight of the scrubby, many barefooted, poorly dressed children with glowing, jubilant faces, would dissolve the coldest, western cynic's heart.
We were escorted into the living room of the family with whom we would stay as dozens of people crowded in. After Paul handed out candy to the children, he began to hand out photographs of people present whose pictures he had taken during his stay last year. Soon afterward, a demure young woman came up to Paul, stood in front of him and in silence, with downcast eyes, extended her forearms with upturned palms horizontal to the floor a few inches from Paul's waist. Without a word being exchanged, Paul placed his hands over hers, without touching, and she began to move her palms slowly, back and forth, for several seconds. Paul moved his hands in synchrony with hers. Then she repeated the same process with me. The young woman's ritual was a moving, wordless moment partaking of a universal language of the body that existed prior to words or thought, a form of communication that still resides somewhere deep within all of us, despite the fact such expressions had long ago been banished from our civilized lives.
I stayed in Kosovo only for another week, though I wish I could have stayed longer. During that time, Paul placed himself entirely at the service of his hosts and many Romani families throughout Kosovo. I saw him daily, tirelessly, drive people for hours to visit relatives, reunite families who had not seen each other for years, take people to hospitals, meetings, celebrations, buy food and supplies, patiently listen to and record their all too often tragic lives, as well as bring their plight to the indifferent attention of relief agencies. We would also play chess, play pool, relax and exchange tidbits about the world, our lives and families. His bearing was always solid, real, human, respectful and forthright, with no condescension. And all this was done in an atmosphere of constant potential danger. For example, once we stopped at a Serb restaurant and it so happened that there were two UN cops from the United States at the next table. These cops told Paul that Kosovo was still a dangerous place. "There have been 837 murders just in this area since the war," one cop said, waving his hand in a circle, "and no one has been prosecuted. Be careful, guy, everyone I've known here who had a cocky attitude and thought they could take care of themselves, I eventually found shot dead."
The book that you hold in your hands is a unique book, a living testimonial to a contemporary tragedy (unfortunately hardly the only one in our world today) by a man dedicated to using his ability for others, and whom I had the privilege to get to know and see at work.
Csaba Polony
PAUL POLANSKY