The city was covered as if by a spider’s web.
To get to the centre one had to go past
at least fifty street sentries.
A simple trip required as much
as two hours through barricades,
checkpoints and tank traps.
A leg, its foot in a boot still attached,
a vast pool of dark blood
washed over the back of the market,
coursing around the cabbages, potatoes
and shopping bags. Cars doubled
as ambulances.
Pedestrian walkways were riddled with cavities
left by mortar and artillery strikes.
And after the war some were filled
as a telltale, with bright red plastic.