MILENA BANJSKA
I started driving toward Mitrovica via the interstate
just passing by squatting kids, tractors, and trees weighed down by fruit
along with little girls with bare navels
eventually reaching the part of the country where my mother was born
and her mother too
even my sister was born there
where the doctor happened to be drunk
I spotted some American soldiers
they were hooking up
one of them was wearing bifocals
they’re quite small
maybe they send bigger ones to other locations
flags were hanging everywhere
but flags don't mean much to me—a flag is just a flag
I never joined the military, nor am I capable of it
I'm a massive coward, really
and I lie whenever I know better
the grass was such an intense green it almost stung
and the sky felt so close it could lull you into a sweet sleep in an empty field
so what does it matter if those heavily armed soldiers are hooking up there
then I saw a sign on the right side
it read "Banjska"
and that's when it hit me
my grandmother, my mother, my sister, the land, the cemetery, and the Ibar river
it all caught up to me right then, and it won't let go—it never will
because I remembered
it came back to me in the middle of the night
and I will never forget Banjska
because someone once said to Strahinjić, "Bane"
"Bane was in little Banjska"
Milena Markovic
There are few heroes like him
As they were to Strahinjić's Bane.
...Goethe paused, bewildered, before the final lines of Banović Strahinja in the William Gerhard translation; he was profoundly struck by their core message...
