Really just a simple question

When the planted villages were sown,

Houses uprooted, the market blown

Apart and roads swarming with mercenaries;

As impaled women littered the ditches,

The pantries looted. His family worked

These fields for six generations, patched up

The same hovel (really just a simple man)

Warmed hands over the same hearth.

Outside Pristina

The fields were burnt, the hovel scorched,

The hearth cracked and he stood in his doorway,

Pitchfork in hand and a stubborn chin

When his country grew bored, then mad,

and a neighbour scrambled to leave

Some mark of his own exploded home

In the mud before the heavy rain erases all their tracks,

And asked just a simple question:

And was answered with a riddle

Of bullets through the heart.