<b>Dogs and Bones</b>

After a few days of war 
the Sarajevo streets were a catwalk for dogs: 
perfumed dogs, well-groomed dogs, dogs 
with cut-glass collars 
and not a flea between them. Their owners 
had left them as they left 
the burning city. 
The trash-heaps became 
a battlefield where the lapdogs lost 
to an army of strays, lean-limbed 
and mangy with hate. 
Cowering and cleansed, the back-alley refugees 
retreated to the doorways 
of locked apartments, barking in answer 
to each unearthly whistle 
as the morning shells came in. 
*** 
...one of those locked apartments 
where we kicked down the door, searching 
for a [bad word] sniper and found 
the skeleton of an old woman fused 
to a kitchen chair, yes, merged with the wood. 
She had starved to death 
sitting next to a pantry crammed with cans of food. 
We spent a long time debating the [bad word] issue 
of her religion. Yackety-yack. We could get no clue 
from the photos that littered the place, 
or the needlepoint of a knight 
and castle, or the hundred 
bottles of perfume placed around her bed. 
Her piously folded hands remained a secret. 
It was dawn before the argument died out 
and we carred her into the street where dogs 
were fighting amid the garbage-- 
nothing they wouldn't risk, 
nothing they wouldn't eat. Who cares, 
anyway? Who knows 
whether she even believed in God? 'By God, 
God will find his hands full 
after this war," someone said, and we fell 
silent, pretending not to see 
her silly grin, and the sudden silver glint 
of the can-opener on its chain 
around her neck.

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