Cold Night Lullaby

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I'm going to describe this book properly in a reply to this, spoilered out, because it's heavily triggering.

Colin Mackay went to Bosnia as an aid worker, during the war. Bosnia haunted him ever after, until he committed suicide in 2003. To read his poetry in this volume is like watching the haunting.

I knew about it because of Karine Polwart's song, “Waterlily“. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6A-OhXL3ATs

It was a reread for me. Still haunted.

shanaqui I am dead serious, do not click the spoiler comment I'm about to post unless you're braced for the horrors of the Bosnian war, sexual violence, murder, mutilation. The poems are incredibly vivid and clear and I don't want to pussyfoot around what the poems contain, because I'd be doing people (and Mackay's suffering, and Bosnia) an injustice by pretending it's a pretty volume. 1mo

shanaqui In Bosnia, Colin Mackay fell in love with a Serbian woman, Svetlana. He kissed her goodbye in the morning, drove to Sarajevo to figure out how to take her to Britain, drove back the same day to find her dead, raped, mutilated, by Serbs who saw her as a traitor. Her six-year-old daughter lay dead beside her. Her son's body was never found.

By way of a parting shot, the Serbs thrust a knife into her vagina.

Very clearly, Mackay could not forget. 1mo

shanaqui There are graphic poems before that about bodies in the river, how routine that all became, how numb you became to it -- but I don't think Mackay could ever become numb to the death of Svetlana. She ended up being Bosnia to him, her death looming large among everything he witnessed, the thing that made it impossible to ever truly come home and be safe.

I hope with all my heart that his death brought him the peace he clearly could not find. 1mo

shanaqui Repeating my warning in case not all comments load: DO NOT click the spoilers unless you're ready for the atrocities of the Bosnian war, sexual violence, murder, etc. 1mo

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