Spreading Democracy Poem by Leo Yankevich

(Serbia 1999)

1.
How to explain?
Suddenly
she lies in pain
amid debris―

orphaned fingers,
blood-stained blouse―
a scream that lingers
in her razed house.

A girl who talks
to bleeding palms―
around her blocks
and carpet bombs.


2.
A pilot shrouds
the truth and smiles
amid the clouds
three hundred miles

back home to base.
He cannot tell
which was whose face.
High over hell,

his stealth’s black wings
still mock the night,
and fallen things
in morning light.