Trusina 1992-1993
after Gbenga Adesina
The first text message was sent as the year closed.
Before that, red-faced men stood and demanded
translation. They wanted us to know: war is coming.
We were hours away when the troops started sieging.
In the village we played with our dolls, our fathers
dealt cards and waited, our mothers looked askance
at the neighbours. A man told us that there was a limit
to community. He put a number to it: one hundred and fifty.
Dunbar’s effect cut our village in two: Muslims on one
side, Catholics on the other. Back then people still shared
cigarettes made in their dead country, there were no
fences; we hadn’t been told the news. The Pope forgave
Galileo in light of the truth. Elsewhere people died
in earthquakes, floods, mining accidents, school
shootings, plane crashes. People died in war. Soon
this would come to us, two armies rolling in to clash
across the street. Already a ghost had been seen haunting
the edge of our solar system while another stepped
daintily through a rainforest in Vietnam. We knew
nothing of this. We kept bees, raised sheep, picked
fruit. And when our army came for our neighbours
we ran to the hills and hid.
Image: Landscape from the village of Trusina, 2023. Image credit: Detektor.
A newer version of this poem has been published under the title, Between Aprils, in Vucic’s debut collection, after war, 2026.
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