KÓRYOS
The vast open sky, bright brilliant and blue
dwelling place of the Father, cruel and clear
in his might, the stars now trembling in fear
witnesses without number as the world turns
to the immense evil his children bring
They cut the men into pieces, blind children
and carry the women away, over
the empty horizon into the steppe
always at night, always out of the sight
of their merciless Father in Heaven
Prayer always fails keep them from your door
the same with sacrifice, the same with walls
Their gifts are holy trauma, evidence
that stretches across time
now called history.
URHEIMAT
o land of kings buried under sweeping grass
where men-women once communed with hateful gods
laughing, driving poles of cedar deep
into the despised earth; the sky laughed
at the misery of their enemies, as did
the wolves, the horses, the wheels of chariots
far from here, flensed bone tells me
they ate their dead and prayed to skulls
dancing sunwise around genitals of stone
you weren't all that different from one another
but God granted one nation victory and erased the other
— Jan E. Mehmedović is a writer from the United States and tweets from @insekt__.