It takes one
Today
I will begin
to write a narrative
on the city's walls.
In the beginning,
it will say,
in the beginning
was a world we named
Earth.
It is all we remember.
We forget,
and history repeats,
each time creating
a variation
on the theme,
to see if we are
paying attention.
It begins, this time,
with a random
chaos of tanks
playing games in and out
and across a landscape,
seeking the order
they believe exists
in all things,
cohering at last
into straight lines:
Pause,
Aim,
Fire.
But this is not
what I want to tell you.
I want to write,
on our city walls,
one building at a time,
one space at a time,
names,
names of the dead
names of those who died
by violence, abuse,
by abandonment,
and ambition.
I want everyone,
all with still-beating
hearts,
to look up
to find names
of the absent
dropping,
like pennies,
on their eyes.
I want every
one to read,
on our city walls,
the incomplete narrative
of our evolving kind,
and to know
there is always "me"
and to lower our eyes,
to turn away,
is yet another crime
against humanity.
What we did
What We Did
in peacetime.
waited
for one of our gods
to absolve us
for all we did.
the long night
between confession
and absolution
watched,
in darkness,
as bomb-light traced
the trajectory of collapse
the endless cries
of children
in the stutter of gunfire,
if absolution came,
we did not hear
everyone with the greatest right
to speak
was dead
in peacetime,
in the view from afar,
nothing is real
until it happens to you
stick and stone,
bomb on bone
sleep
that never comes
at peace, they said,
seventy years
at peace,
there has been,
in seventy years,
no war.
What we saw
What we saw
through a lens
focal length
ten millimeters
from the heart
every kind
of madness
the struggle
to convert the ineffable
to image
eyes shuttered
all the things
we cannot bear
to see
breath's absence
on the road
to be
witness
to its disappearance
to beg forgiveness
because we are
just passing through
body or moral injury
do not differ
even by degree
the wound
is ours
for life
in the beginning,
did we imagine
only love?
the wind
opens its throat
and sighs
Gaza Dawn
a child opens his eyes,
thinks he is looking at
a page
from his grandfather's book
of Picasso prints
body parts
out of alignment,
primary colour
red
a low moan seeps
from underground;
millenia of voices
chant prayers
for the dead
along a path,
a line of pulsing hearts
as far as the eye
can see:
a procession of ghosts,
beginning again
to stumble
from one continent
to another,
falling,
rising,
drowning.
one breath short
of a promised land
suffer the children
sparrow-sized
in their wake
Somewhere in the world
somewhere in the world
bombs are falling
don't look away
somewhere in the world
a man creates a lie
and uses it
to justify a rain of terror
somewhere in the world
children are dying,
one by one and
two by two
as they flee the ark
of a covenant we've failed
to keep
somewhere in the world
another generation
joins the legion
of those who left their lives
on the altar
of another man's ambition
somewhere in the world
survivors kneel in the ashes
of charnel-houses
of memory
don't look away
somewhere in the world
a woman feels hope slip away
and prays to exchange
her all-powerful god
for a kinder one
somewhere in the world
a man watches hope leave
and fights anyway
to retrieve it
somewhere in the world
a woman brings bread,
warm from the oven
and swaddled in white cloth,
and asks that we eat it
in remembrance
somewhere in the world
are killing fields
where the price of entry
is your soul
don't look away
somewhere in the world
a man believes in the circularity
of life,
and that there will be a time
when lies stick hard
in the throat of those
who utter them
choking off air
somewhere in the world
a woman ponders the difference
between letter
and spirit of the law
and asks if it is
where justice lives
somewhere in the world
grief echoes against walls
where an involuntary cry of loss
is singular and universal
in its moment of utterance
confirming that some things
can never be the same again
don't look away
the world needs witnesses
who are not afraid
to speak
Anna Akhmatova
Days pass, and years.
Everything changes,
and nothing.
Life scrapes to the bone.
Russia is my body.
Its veins flow with blood,
as mine do.
Escape would be
to sever an artery.
How do I separate
love of place
from what men do to it?
We thought we were done
with history,
that it was done
with us,
but again
'Death's great black wing'
looms over us
and again we must keep a vigil
at bolted prison doors.
Despair escapes through
winter's lips,
our faces twist
in a parody
of frozen grief.
We learn to beg.
I learn to prostitute words
so that Stalin
will release my son.
Faustian bargains
run rampant
we are reduced to them,
to survive,
to speak for the dead,
for the speechless,
the silenced.
Imbedded in each day
a crucifixion of hope,
goodbye.
We live on the manna
of words balanced
on a point of ignition,
their heat, their light,
the slim space
between thought
and articulation,
the place we store our words,
words into memory,
then burned in
"a ritual
beautiful and bitter'
samizdat.
We feed each other
the bodies of our dead,
hold to a belief
we can free their words
from 'tortured mouths'
in a final requiem
of 'one hundred million'
voices.
dark ages
the air is heavy
with new burnings
smoke clots
in our nostrils
our words,
beaten on an anvil
of discontent,
reshape into expressions
of hate
fear heaps fuel
on the funeral pyre
of trust,
of reason
each syllable of speech
ignites,
basks in a temporary warmth;
we search through ash
for what remains
our fingers leave charcoal prints
on what we touch
on what touches us
the heart aches,
this time in wonder:
that it should be
the lingual achievement
of our species
that so divides us
a peal of prayer rings out,
unheard
unheeded
like a virus released
from ice melt
dark ages revisit
barbarians are among us
we walk to meet them