All In One Boat

By Will Kirkland

It’s hard to focus on the moment
if that’s what anniversaries are for,
the moment of unraveled time
so enormous it cannot be named
mere moment.

Remembrance — of what?

Of the airplanes striking?
Of the black smoke rising?
Of the bodies falling?
Of our own brief living with that dark body falling?
Of the men rushing into the flames
or the terrified rushing away covered in ash
of plaster and bodies not falling
incinerated, only?

What do we remember –
All this? Or
All that came after?
Or all that didn’t come before?

Do we remember the bodies
of the tens of ten thousands
in the incinerators
of the follow-on wars?
Or the deep hollows
where knowledge never found home
in the men with the warnings
in the months leading up to
the moment
when the airplanes
the towers
the bodies
the flames
shaped memories
like nothing before?

September 11, 2008

More, and finer, below… (more…)

By Will Kirkland, 2008

I am wrestling with myself

The old continuous struggle.

First one side pinned to the floor,

the other nearly triumphant.

Where is the referee! Finish the count!

Then an escape, a fast arm strikes!

I am facing myself once again,

both sides on their knees, hands extended,

looking for a grab and a hold.

Now up on their feet. Circling.

Breath coming hard.

Canny by now, the old and the young.

One goes for the knees! The other kicks free!

An arm grab! A take down! A double reverse!

On it goes. No one is watching. The referee’s biased

first the one then the other. They go on fighting

to the death, as is said.

Will Kirkland 9/6/08

By Will Kirkland, 2008

I am an old man

Distracted by flies

in the autumn warm sun

on the backs of those passing by

Bare legs baby laughter the sound of a ball batted

but I have these flies

no one else sees.

When the bats attack

will it break the spell

of my invisibility?

Will Kirkland 9/6/08

By Alan Dugan, 1961

Whelped from blackness by a pressure of rocks,
black water rose like breath from the lungs
and bust in speech. It poured its glitter,
trouble, on the sand, and babbled on about
its quick exploits in shape above the plain.
This speaking taught the desert thirst: once
sucked at by that thirster, sand, the water spread
its cool hair over fever: sand was changed:
what was almost sand in sand, the waiting sand,
a hidden seed, leaped up and burst in palms!
The water argued greenery to sand: now sand
is passionate with fruit! Ticking with bugs,
bustling with flowers and death, the garden is
a place and fireworks, a green wild on the calm.

Oh its mirages offer water, figs, and shade
to windrift birds for songs and wings of praise.
Clock-lost nomads, lost in the running sands,
will have to choose, when madness lights
advertisements of water to their soaking need,
if they will drop to the truth of desert, dry
to sand, to run to where the fanfare of quick
water winds their clocks, give place to love,
and lets them drink their living from its deaths.

I’ve been reading Alan Dugan lately, one poem at a time. The morning is best for me, before the newspapers, even before the caffeined tea. Others prefer the evening, just before bed, or while lying in it. A small husk of silence is the requisite thing, surrounding the seed of the reading.

Here’s an early Dugan poem, 1961.

On An East Wind from the Wars

The wind came if for several thousand miles all night
and changed the close lie of your hair this morning. It
has brought well-travelled sea-birds who forget
their passage, singing. Old songs from the old
battle-and-burial grounds seem new in new lands.
They have to do with spring as new in seeming as
the old air idling in your hair in fact. So new,
so ignorant of any weather not your own,
you like it, breathing in a wind that swept
the battlefields of their worst smells, and took the dead
unburied to the potter’s field of air. For miles
they sweetened on the sea-spray, the foul washed off,
and what is left is spring to you, love, sweet,
the salt blown past your shoulder luckily. No
wonder your laugh rings like a chisel as it cuts
your children’s new names in the tombstone of thin air.

by Tahah Muhammad Ali
translation Peter Cole, Yahya Hjazi & Gabriel Levin

You asked me once,
on our way back
from the midmorning
trip to the spring:
“What do you hate,
and who do you love?”

And I answered,
from behind the eyelashes
of my surprise,
my blood rushing
like the shadow
cast by a cloud of starlings:
“I hate departure…
I love the spring
and the path to the spring,
and I worship the middle hours of the morning.”
And you laughed…
and the almond tree blossomed
and the thicket grew loud with nightingales.

…A question
now four decades old:
I salute that question’s answer;
and an answer
as old as your departure;
I salute that answer’s question…

And today,
it’s preposterous,
here we are at a friendly airport
by the slimmest of chances,
and we meet.
Ah, Lord!
we meet.
And here you are again,
it’s absolutely preposterous–
I recognized you
but you didn’t recognize me.
“Is it you?!”
But you wouldn’t believe it.
And suddenly
you burst out and asked:
“If you’re really you,
What do you hate
and who do you love?”

And I answered–
my blood
fleeing the hall
rushing in me
like the shadow
cast by a cloud of starlings:
“I hate departure,
and I love the spring,
and the path to the spring,
and I worship the middle
hours of morning.”

And you wept,
and flowers bowed their heads,
and doves in the silk of their sorrow stumbled.

From: So What, Copper Canyon Press

By Will Kirkland, 2002

The police battalion in Poland
           was ordered (with an option to refuse)
To round up the Jews, one thousand, eight hundred
Were marched to the forest, and made to lie down
Shoulder to shoulder, on the summer warm ground.
They were shot at close range.

All of them:
        Fathers and mothers;
                         children beside them;
Fathers of fathers; mothers
                         of mothers’ mothers.
This was a day in July of 1942.

It did not end that day was only the beginning.
Volunteering made easier by drink, the stepping up
and shooting down. Hesitation left. Another day of work to do.
More neighbors slaughtered. Five hundred
It took to murder three thousand…
Times ten and a few hundred thrown in.
One day they groaned among themselves
          we can’t go on.
It’s just like harvest time, said one;
Worse! they all complained
Caressing their shoulders and arms.
We are too old for this a loud one said
           I am thirty-seven, he is forty-two.
Who knew there were so many Jews?

Will Kirkland, 2002
Worked up from C Hedges in “War is a Force that Gives Us Meaning,” p 87-88
See , Christopher Browning, on Reserve Police Battalion 101 of Poland

by Fadhil al-Azzawi
Translated by Khaled Mattawa

During my long, boring hours of spare time
I sit to play with the earth’s sphere.
I establish countries without police or parties
and I scrap others that no longer attract consumers.
I run roaring rivers through barren deserts
and I create continents and oceans
that I save for the future just in case.
I draw a new colored map of the nations:
I roll Germany to the Pacific Ocean teeming with whales
and I let the poor refugees
sail pirates’ ships to her coasts
in the fog
dreaming of the promised garden in Bavaria.
I switch England with Afghanistan
so that its youth can smoke hashish for free
provided courtesy of Her Majesty’s government.
I smuggle Kuwait from its fenced and mined borders
to Comoro, the islands
of the moon in its eclipse,
keeping the oil fields in tact, of course.
At the same time I transport Baghdad
in the midst of loud drumming
to the islands of Tahiti.
I let Saudi Arabic crouch in its eternal desert
to perserve the purity of her thoroughbred camels.
This is before I surrender America
back to the Indians
just to give history
the justice it has long lacked.

I know that changing the world is not easy
but it remains necessary nonetheless.

By Will Kirkland, 2005

It was in Bosnia, during a war:
Serbs were shooting at Muslims,
Muslims at Serbs;
Cruelty was organized.
Not all
Took sides. A Serbian family demurred:
This is where we live
these are our neighbors
let Allah and God settle their differences
as we have settled ours.

These Serbs were not
Well loved by other Serbs.
Shells fell day and night
On Muslims, and on all
Such traitorous Serbs.

During a break in the fighting
Muslims came to take their son away.
He never returned. Another died
While fighting with the Serbs. Their third
Was a girl, an infant at this time.
Her mother’s breasts went dry.
The shelling did not cease. The girl
Was given tea. Now inside the walls,
As well, the suck of death.

Until a Muslim farmer came
with milk. Every morning
Before the light
he brought a tin.
The child needs its milk.
What matter Serbs?

Though other Muslims cursed him
He came. He refused
the payment offered; didn’t want
their prayers.

Though the guns roared, his boots
Ascended the stairs, four hundred
And forty-two days let us praise

This man and the god he serves
Bringing milk to a child
In a time of war.

(C) Will Kirkland February, 2005

My work up of a story told by C Hedges in War Is A Force that Gives Us Meaning, p 52-53

26 September 1945

They’ve taken us prisoner,
they’ve locked us up :
me inside the walls,
you outside.
But that’s nothing.
The worst
is when people - knowingly or not -
carry prison inside themselves…
Most people have been forced to do this,
honest, hard-working, good people
who deserve to be loved as much as I love you…

tr. by Randy Blasing and Mutlu Konuk

One of the great pleasures of reading, but even more, of listening to poetry, or music, especially opera, is the sudden jeweled surprise that flashes against a background of all we are accustomed to. So it happened to me at the annual American Literary Translators Association [ALTA] conference near Dallas Texas.

Jim Hoggard read a poem of his in the pantoum form, a style of verse from Malaysia, apparently brought to the west by Victor Hugo. The rules for the pantoum are that it is written in quatrains whose lines should sustain the basic meter, though it doesn’t have to be a slave to a metronome. Now goes the fun. Lines 2 & 4 of the first stanza become lines 1 & 3 of the second stanza, and lines 2 & 4 of the second stanza become lines 1 & 3 of the third stanza. And so on as long as one wants to go. Then as we get to the final stanza, we realize that the only lines that have so far not been repeated are lines 1 & 3 of the first stanza. And in the final stanza those lines become 2 & 4, only in reverse order, with line 3 of the first stanza becoming line 2 of the final stanza, and line 1 of the first stanza becoming line 4 of the final stanza. That’s the classic form. Here is Jim’s “Rite of Confession.”

A RITE OF CONFESSION

Because the wind here blows insistently
we should be prepared for reversals
We should know how to read the world
in mysteries of rock and cloud and sea

We should be prepared for reversals
and not forget how threatening weather can be
in mysteries of rock and cloud and sea
We need to relearn how rough the world can be

and not forget how threatening weather can be
We should stop getting lost in ourselves
We need to recall how rough the world can be
when we look at it blindly or indifferently

We should stop getting lost in ourselves
We should know how to read the world
yet we look at it blindly or indifferently
Listen: the wind here blows insistently

–James Hoggard

Jim is a friend of many years. We have both translated from the Spanish, though he more from the Americas and I from Spain. In addition he has published several volumes of poetry and fiction. This poem concludes Wearing The River: New Poems, which won the PEN Southwest Poetry Award for 2007, published by Wings Press. Other Hoggard work can be found at Pecan Grove Press and Texas A&M Press

For more about ALTA you could visit a blog run by some of the members.

IS IT TRUE?

By Osama Abu Kabir

Is it true that the grass grows again after rain?

Is it true that the flowers will rise up again in the Spring?

Is it true that birds will migrate home again?

Is it true that the salmon swim back up their streams?

It is true. This is true. These are all miracles.

But is it true that one day we’ll leave Guantanamo Bay?

Is it true that one day we’ll go back to our homes?

I sail in my dreams. I am dreaming of home.

To be with my children, each one part of me;

To be with my wife and the ones that I love;

To be with my parents, my world’s tenderest hearts.

I dream to be home, to be free from this cage.

But do you hear me, oh Judge, do you hear me at all?

We are innocent, here, we’ve committed no crime.

Set me free, set us free, if anywhere still

Justice and compassion remain in this world!

– Osama Abu Kabir

Copyright © University of Iowa Press. Used with permission.

The Wall Street Journal, of all places, reports on a new book of poems from prisoners held in Guantanamo, cleared by military censors for possible secret code. There is a secret code, of course. Of the heart. [thx Nancy Peters.]

What’s Lost in Translation

[backup link]

The famous “Six Day War” of the Middle East –Israel against its antagoneighbors– has come to its 40th anniversary. The day it started I, a young US Navy officer, was boarding a Soviet passenger ship in Yokohama, Japan, having heard no more than a headline or two and imagining my life might change immeasurably if the war were joined by the United States, and of course, the USSR. We were heading to Khabarovsk, Russia on what was to be a 14 day train trip across the whole country, followed for me by another two weeks rounding the world to what would be my next duty station –a ship out of San Diego. The war in Vietnam was raging and I was heading away from it. But if Israel was in trouble there was no way in hell the US would stay out. The war in Vietnam would seem like a minor skirmish.

I was traveling incognito, of course, from my own countrymen as well as the Russians. I knew no Russian and the ship steward standing next to me at the rail knew only enough English to respond when I asked him: “Israel…attack (with hands indicating airplanes)…Egypt?,” “Yes.” Adding, “Israel man, bad! Arab man, good.” That’s all I knew until I arrived in Moscow and the news of the war had by that time almost disappeared from the pages of the International Herald Tribune. Even so, my life, as all of ours, was immeasurably changed by those six days. We just didn’t know then.

Years later, living in Spain, I found a marvelous short volume of writing by an author I was completely swept up by. Max Aub was a Spaniard of the Civil War generation. Born in Paris of a German Jew and a French (German-Jewish ancestry) mother, the family had come to Spain following the father’s trade as an itinerant salesman. Max, as an adult, was imprisoned in concentration camps first in France (Le Vent) then in Morocco (Djelfa.) He fled, as the story went, hidden in a big rolling basket of laundry, from Morocco, to Mexico where he died in 1972. Along with his great impressive sweep of novels about the Spanish Civil War (The Magic Labyrinth), and some sly, amusing “factions” about Pablo Picasso’s best friend, Jusep Torres Campalans (totally invented, along with actual paintings) Aub had written, Impossible Sinai. A 70 page volume, it purports to be composed of scraps of writings and short biographies of the dead of the Six Day War, Arab and Jew, Bedouin and unbeliever, translated with the help of Max’s students, from the native languages — all of this coming, of course, from the fertile imagination and empathy of Max.

Some of my translation from Max’s Spanish into English, has been published in The New Orleans Review, Winter, 1986, but we could never find a publisher for the whole book. So, I offer what I have done, perhaps a third of the whole, as an anniversary memory of a war that, depending on the kaleidescope one chooses, was glorious or horrific, as the light turns.

A Preliminary Note

These writings were found in the pockets and backpacks of Arabs and Jews who died in the so-called “Six Day War” in 1967. The translations are due, in great part, to my students. I am indebted to them.

I take no sides here; I have only chosen for publication with the kind help of Alastair Reid those that seem to me to be the most representative.

THE EVENTS. June, 1967 (from the 5th to the 10th.)

The First Day, Monday

Israeli aircraft cross the border at dawn and destroy the Egyptian air force on the ground. Similar incursions occur simultaneously in Jordan, Syria and Iraq while the Algerian air force is lured into occupied airports and disarmed.

The Arab countries begin their attack through the Gaza Strip, Jerusalem and the north of Galilee. Syrian and Iraqi airplanes bomb Haifa, Tel Aviv, Netanya; Jordanian artillery shells the border from Qalquiliya.

Israeli tank columns cut through the Gaza Strip and advance across the Sinai Desert, capturing El Arish. Israeli paratroops land in Sharm el Sheikh, on the Red Sea, while in Jerusalem bloody fighting takes place (some at bayonet point) resulting in the Jordanian capture of Mt. Scopus, to the north of the city, under the command of Hussein.

Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Iraq, Algeria, Sudan and Kuwait declare war on Israel. Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Yemen and Tunis promise aid.

General Dayan, the Israeli Defense Minister, declares that Israel has no territorial designs.

De Gaulle suspends the shipment of war material to Israel.

The USSR states that it will not intervene unless the US does. The United States promises to be neutral in “thought, word and deed.”

The Second Day, Tuesday

Israeli tanks advance towards the Suez Canal. Another armored column succeeds in over running Kuntilla and turns towards Sharm el Sheikh to reinforce the positions taken by the paratroops.

The coast at Tel Aviv is shelled by Egyptian warships, and in the north of Galilee the Syrians succeed in penetrating Israeli territory.

An Israeli offensive along the Jordanian border results in the silencing of the enemy artillery and the taking of Jenin and Qalquilaya. In Jerusalem the air force bombs the Jordanian positions.

Nasser accuses the United States and Great Britain of taking part in the air operations on behalf of Israel, breaks diplomatic relations with the United States and closes the Suez Canal.

The US and Great Britain deny Nasser’s accusations. Syria and Iraq break diplomatic relations with the US and Great Britain. Algeria also breaks with the US and nationalizes the oil companies while Kuwait and Iraq hold back all deliveries of petroleum to North American and England.

England suspends shipment of arms to the Arab countries, while Germany offers a shipment of gas masks (!) to Israel. The USSR says that Israel is the aggressor and demands the withdrawal of troops from Egyptian territory. In the UN a resolution is passed unanimously calling for the cessation of hostilities.

The Third Day, Wednesday

Israeli forces enter Gaza and continue toward the Canal in the North, taking Romani, and towards the Mitla Pass in the South where they are engaged by the Arabs near Prot Taufiq. Landing forces complete the capture of Sharm el Sheikh, as well as of the islands in the Straits of Tiran.

In Galilee the Syrians are thrown back from their positions. Israeli forces conquer Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Ramallah and Jericho, thus occupying the entire east bank of the Jordan River.

Israel and Jordan accept the cease fire called for by the UN. Egypt refuses.

The USSR threatens Israel with the rupture of diplomatic relations if it doesn’t observe the cease fire.

Jordan accuses Israel of violating the cease fire.

Yemen, the Sudan, and Mauritania break relations with the US.

The Fourth Day, Thursday

When an Israeli column comes within sight of the Suez Canal in the North, the Egyptians counter attack in the area of Bir Gafgafa, along the main line of march. There is a great tank battle in which the Israelis crush the Egyptians.

In Galilee the Syrians withstand the thrust of the Jews, who are now reinforced due to the end of resistance on the Jordanian border; the war ends on the Sinai front.

Israel broadcasts a recording of a telephone conversation between Nasser and Hussein in which they agree to accuse the United States and Great Britain of participating in the air attacks.

Egypt and Syria accept the cease fire.

The Fifth Day, Friday

Israeli airplanes bomb the Syrian positions, silencing their artillery and allowing the advance of their own troops toward the interior of Syria where they occupy the heights near the sea of Galilee.

Part of the forces of the UAR which are surrounded in Bir Gafgafa are able to break out and retreat to the African side of the Canal. Those remaining scatter and wander, without arms or equipment until they are taken prisoners by the Jews.

Nasser, in an emotional speech, resigns as the President of the UAR, accepts responsibility for the disaster and puts himself at the service of his country as a private citizen. His resignation is refused by the National Assembly and produces, paradoxically, an upsurge in popularity of the Rais, with demonstrations in the streets of Cairo.

The Sixth Day, Saturday

The Israelis cross into Syria all along the border. There are air bales near Damascus.

Israel and Syria agree on a cease-fire.

The USSR breaks diplomatic relations with Israel.

With the cessation of the fighting on the Syrian front, at 6:30 PM Middle East time) the Arab-Israeli War is over. As they say.

*

Salomon Chavsky

A soldier in the Signal Corps, a witty young man and fond of practical jokes; he could run like a gazelle and they called him “Kangaroo.” Happily without any culture, but a very capable broadcaster. A fine performer of popular songs. He was born in a kibbutz near Genezaret. He died on the fifth day near Bir Gafgafa.

Night time still.
Sand.
Horses.
Sheep.
Soldiers
Camels
asleep.
Dark skinned
Bedouins.
Tanks!
Radio!
Too late!
Surrounded!
Poor Arabs,
Arab poor.
Which is the adjective,
which the substantive?
Who is responsible
for this disaster?

If you don’t tell anyone
in part it is…

*

Ibn Musa Amir

A Bedouin. He was in a tank, his corpse half burned, about twenty meters from the highway, two hundred kilometers to the south of Gaza. I don’t know, of course, the day of his death.

Yes, certainly the land you offer me is better, richer than my own.

But it’s not the same.

Every piece of land is different: some have water, some have none, some are high and some are low, some are steep and some are level, good for sheep and bad for goats, close to the sea and far away, hot and cold.

But none of this matters.

There are only two kinds of land: mine and all the rest.

You can offer Paradise to me; what I want is the desert I was born in and which you stole from me.

You can give me a palace made of richly colored marble. What I want is the tent where my two horses and three camels gave birth.

Don’t give up yet. Kill me, so my dust can return with the wind and mix with the desert sand.

*
You will find the whole translation in this pdf file: Impossible Sinai, Max Aub

Federico Garcia Lorca, high in the pantheon of the worlds poets, was born on this day, June 5, in 1898. A pleasant thing to think about, and the 38 years he gave us.

Here’s a translation of one of his poems I did some years ago.

The Rider’s Song

Cordova
Distant…alone.

Black mare, big moon,
olives in my saddlebags.
Though I know the roads
I’ll never come to Cordova.

Upon the plains, upon the wind
black mare, red moon.
Death is looking down at me
from the towers of Cordova.

Aii how long the road is!
Aii my valiant mare!
Aii! the death that waits for me
before I get to Cordova!

Cordova,

distant…alone.

from The Cricket Sings, New Directions, 1980

You can read more of my Lorca translations in Federico Garcia Lorca: Collected Works or in the Selected Works.

by Nazim Hikmet

Things I Didn’t Know I Loved

it’s 1962 March 28th
I’m sitting by the window on the Prague-Berlin train
night is falling
I never knew I liked
night descending like a tired bird on a smoky wet plain
I don’t like
comparing nightfall to a tired bird

I didn’t know I loved the earth
can someone who hasn’t worked the earth love it
I’ve never worked the earth
it must be my only Platonic love
(more…)

Following the news of soldiers at Walter Reed Army hospital, and today more scandal at more hospitals, brought to mind a poem of a WW I soldier I’ve been reading about lately.

By Sigfried Sassoon

Does it Matter?

DOES it matter?–losing your legs?…
For people will always be kind,
And you need not show that you mind
When the others come in after hunting
To gobble their muffins and eggs.

Does it matter?–losing your sight?…
There’s such splendid work for the blind;
And people will always be kind,
As you sit on the terrace remembering
And turning your face to the light.

Do they matter?–those dreams from the pit?…
You can drink and forget and be glad,
And people won’t say that you’re mad;
For they’ll know you’ve fought for your country
And no one will worry a bit.

More from Counter-Attack, 1918

By Will Kirkland, 1980

Passing them
–our car, their cart–
it seemed as if
the hind legs of the horse
had broken
out of sorrow, or in fear.

They raised their hands
we saw two shapes
not yet a wave
or greeting;
not even supplication;
two thin, black sleeved
reeds holding up
a tent of grief.

At the edge
of orange tree blossom,
the burning smoke of Spanish winter,
we stopped and waited.

They explained
the object that they carried
was not a rolled up mat,
but was their son,
encircled by some cane
just cut, he seemed a log,
ten years and green.

Would we take them?
faster?

The horse would find his way
to home or die.
It’s all the same, he said,
passing her the mat
and getting in
to be passed
the cane, head first, and
she got in and put the feet
beneath her hands. Charcoal black,
two tears
trembling on the cane.

Life had made them
after the first brief fire
continual ash.

It’s only the last, he said.
She said nothing, turning
to look at the horse, thinking
perhaps: that one is living
this other one’s dead.

We entered their silence.
They entered the boy’s
in the back seat
with the odor of fields,
the lime of damp walls,
the rustling reeds.

There was nowhere a voice could go
however we wished;
they looking out to opposite sides;
anywhere but down the road –
into the caravan, unseen
but known,
their own and others
hearses and wheels
humankind’s history
of being, has been and was.

As from the first
they were still in dispute:
to weigh him down
with stones and prayers
or let him go. The price
of gas decided. We stopped
behind a beach and buried him
beneath the tide. She didn’t know
but let him go when the stones
went rolling, rolling
out of the water’s way.

Goodbye my son
she said and turned.
And, Come, Old man.
We’ve still a long way home.

Will Kirkland
1980

I recently found this in an old magazine. I’d forgotten I had written it, and so re-present it for my own eyes as well as any others that might see.

” A Soldier’s Declaration

I am making this statement as an act of willful defiance of military authority, because I believe the war is being deliberately prolonged by those who have the power to end it.

I am a soldier, convinced that I am acting on behalf of soldiers. I believe that this war, upon which I entered as a war of defence and liberation has now become a war of aggression and conquest. I believe that the purposes for which I and my fellow soldiers entered upon this war should have been so clearly stated as to have made it impossible to change them, and that, had this been done, the objects witch actuated us would now be attainable by negotiation.

I have seen and endured the suffering of the troops, and I can no longer be a party to prolong these sufferings for ends which I believe to be evil and unjust. I am not protesting against the conduct of the war, but against the political errors and insincerity’s for which the fighting men are being sacrificed.

On behalf of those who are suffering now I make this protest against the deception which is being practised on them; also I believe that I may help to destroy the callous complacence with which the majority of those at home regard the continuance of agonies which they do not share, and which they have not sufficient imagination to realise.
(more…)

The news of the last few days that certain Iraqi squads have taken to blowing up trucks filled with chlorine - to add gas to the horrors of their attacks on others — scratched a match on a poem that has been with me for years and it blew up, again, in my brain.
*

Dulce Et Decorum Est

By Wilfred Owen

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of disappointed shells that dropped behind.

GAS! Gas! Quick, boys!– An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And floundering like a man in fire or lime.–
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
(more…)

By Will Kirkland, 2004

It is hard to make small talk today.
Everything is so huge.

A child has died in Falluja.
A bullet wound the size of brains
has taken him. His mother now prepares
for thirty years of grief, a euphemism
for what her womb will bear, a memory
of what she saw: infanticide by error. The sniper wipes
his burning eye and prays to find
through dust and fear another, better enemy,
swears to christ he will not die
in god’s forsaken alley, squeezing
off another round, another and
another.

Until the infant’s uncle
detonates himself, and him,
to find their separate heavens.

These are all the things I see.

The words descend through space,
Like birds
           on bullet shredded wings;
struggle to be lifted
against the roaring air
exhale and fail. Such tiny, unremembered deaths
in the human scheme of things.

Don’t talk to me. For just another second;
Give my soul its mourning moment
to pack another coffin home.

*
*
*
*
*

Now I, along with all of you, can go,
taken each with our own pain:
A broken toy, a phone call missed;
A headache in the evening.

We talk of little else:
The rising price of gasoline;
How hot it is –too hot to shop,
the pinching shoes.

Are the vegetables organic?

Will the Red Sox lose?

Conversations in the wind,
the words, the wingless birds, the
body parts, come down like rain
a drip, a crawl upon my skin.

Questions of tomorrow come
Drop like ashes on the drums.

Who will pick the children up?
Who will who when what the how if?
Laughter slaps, then slips
and ricochets away.

The goldfinch in the garden
drops a seed, a shadow shimmers overhead,
Goldfinch gone but first it keens.
And we?
          Only whistling in the wind…

Will Kirkland

2004