balkan winter phillip corwin Watching the TV, I can feel their cold: pig farmers and shepherds plodding in fog and mud. Gloveless, hatless. On the roads they walk three abreast, forcing traffic to swerve. I know those faces, those dulled boots that crunch on crusty snow, the cigareted breath. And that despair – brandy-laced coffee grounds in a dry cup, unreadable. This war, that war – sores on the body politic that fester every 20 years or so; old, smoldering pyres that refuse to die. Win or lose, it doesn’t matter. The men leave in loveless convoys. The women work the fields. The children learn to hunt and breed.