A Cloud on the Horizon No Bigger Than...
I long ago allowed my copy of one of my favorite poems to drop out of my possession. I don't remember how. I just know that I have to stop putting off asking Amazon Books to send me another copy. It is a book-length poem about the Civil War called "John Brown's Body," and it is by an American poet who was big in the 1930's and '40's, named Stephen Vincent Benet. I need the poem now, partly because, among other things, it contains a line from which I got the title and the idea for this post.
The line goes something like: "A cloud on the horizon no bigger than a hand." If I remember right, it refers to one of the harbingers of the Civil War, and I think it also has some type of connection with Robert E. Lee.
As in so many other otherwise enjoyable situations, there's a certain pain that goes along with the books that engrossed you so much in your early years. Eventually they become a part of you almost as literally as a section of your skin and flesh, and when a favorite of those volumes gets out of your hands, usually by someone borrowing and never returning it, a long time often goes by before you can get yourself together to replace it. Maybe that's because you feel that, though the words in the new copy will be exactly the same, your heart and mind stay true to that one particular original and now forever lost copy.
Right now, however, I'm wondering if Kosovo might become like that cloud on the horizon, because of how the Serbians are so worked up about losing that province in which they kept such an iron hand around the necks of 85 or 90 percent of its inhabitants, the Albanian ethnics. Now, in their fury and often through the instrument of fire, they're going around wrecking things. They destroyed the buildings and cars at two Kosovo border crossings, and they're not through at those places yet. They're holding big demonstrations elsewhere in Kosovo. They set fire to the U.S. embassy in Belgrade, and later they also attacked the Croatian embassy there, which aroused some some Croatian soccer fans in Zagreb, who then burned the Serbian flag, and the Croatian police hauled in apparently the whole bunch.
Serbia is painfully remembered as having been a flashpoint for two of the three most recent events that left large parts of Europe in horrible convulsions. The shot that eventually led to the First World War was fired there, and more recently Serbia was the terror of its neighbor states after Tito died and Yugoslavia fell to pieces, as the Serbians fought hard to keep those other states in harness.
So are these current events set off by Kosovo's declaration of independence just an initial furore that will eventually die down, or will these fires keep spreading, eventually to burst into something really big that no one can stop?
It looks like another case of the age-old battle between people doing what is clearly prudent to do and, on the other hand, doing what is expected of them.
The line goes something like: "A cloud on the horizon no bigger than a hand." If I remember right, it refers to one of the harbingers of the Civil War, and I think it also has some type of connection with Robert E. Lee.
As in so many other otherwise enjoyable situations, there's a certain pain that goes along with the books that engrossed you so much in your early years. Eventually they become a part of you almost as literally as a section of your skin and flesh, and when a favorite of those volumes gets out of your hands, usually by someone borrowing and never returning it, a long time often goes by before you can get yourself together to replace it. Maybe that's because you feel that, though the words in the new copy will be exactly the same, your heart and mind stay true to that one particular original and now forever lost copy.
Right now, however, I'm wondering if Kosovo might become like that cloud on the horizon, because of how the Serbians are so worked up about losing that province in which they kept such an iron hand around the necks of 85 or 90 percent of its inhabitants, the Albanian ethnics. Now, in their fury and often through the instrument of fire, they're going around wrecking things. They destroyed the buildings and cars at two Kosovo border crossings, and they're not through at those places yet. They're holding big demonstrations elsewhere in Kosovo. They set fire to the U.S. embassy in Belgrade, and later they also attacked the Croatian embassy there, which aroused some some Croatian soccer fans in Zagreb, who then burned the Serbian flag, and the Croatian police hauled in apparently the whole bunch.
Serbia is painfully remembered as having been a flashpoint for two of the three most recent events that left large parts of Europe in horrible convulsions. The shot that eventually led to the First World War was fired there, and more recently Serbia was the terror of its neighbor states after Tito died and Yugoslavia fell to pieces, as the Serbians fought hard to keep those other states in harness.
So are these current events set off by Kosovo's declaration of independence just an initial furore that will eventually die down, or will these fires keep spreading, eventually to burst into something really big that no one can stop?
It looks like another case of the age-old battle between people doing what is clearly prudent to do and, on the other hand, doing what is expected of them.
posted by Carl (aka Sofarsogoo) | 9:53 AM
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