poet

contents

- shock and awe 72 poems against the war

- out loud reports 7 poetry readings against the war

- out loud poets 3: patricia mclean, duane poncy, ethan place

SHOCK and AWE

(a gentle balm)

contents:

ahmad faraz

alexander wat

anna akhmatova

anna swir

antoni slonimski

ariel dorfman

arthur rimbaud

attila gerecz

barbara lamorticella

barbara zelano

bei dao

benjamin perét

bob kaufman

bodo murray

carolyn kizer

charles bukowski

charles hamilton sorley

david ignatow

david ray

denise levertov

diane di prima

duo duo

edward thomas

eleanor wilner

ellie gunn

emily dickinson

fred nemo

frederic manning

georg trakl

gu cheng

h.d.

hayden carruth

henrik visnapuu

homer

ingeborg bachman

ion caraion

james schevill

jános pilinszky

jesse bernstein

jim shugrue

judith wright

kenneth patchen

kojo laing

lawrence ferlinghetti

lawson inada

lenore kandel

lily brett

lisa bernstein

lisa steinman

lucille clifton

mang ke

lynn martin

margareta waterman

marina tsvetaeva

mark twain

michael casey

miroslav holub

mohandas gandhi

naomi lazard

nelly sachs

osip mandelstam

paul celan

philip dacey

ralph chaplin

randall jarrell

richard hugo

robert peterson

robert pinsky

robinson jeffers

saul yurkievich

simone weil

stanley kunitz

steve mason

taban lo liyong

tadeusz rozewicz

tsuboi shigeji

w.b. yeats

w.s. merwin

yusef komunyakaa

zbigniew herbert

ahmad faraz

Beirut

Whose headless body is this

whose scarlet shroud

whose torn and wounded cloak

whose broken voice?

Whose blood is this

that turns the earth a ruby colour,

whose cruel embrace

taking the coffin's shape?

Who are these youths

standing in the line of fire,

what city are they from?

Who are these helpless ones

lying scattered

like a harvest reaped

by enemy swords?

Whose faces have we here,

drops of blood like pearls

glistening on their lips and eyes?

Who is this mother

searching in the debris for her child,

who is this father

his voice lost

in the terrible chaos?

Who are these innocent ones

extinguished

like lamps

by the dark storm?

Which tribe are they from,

these brave people

ready to die?

No one wants to know them

for knowing them is like a test;

we see no child, no mother,

no father in their midst.

In the palaces

the lucky sheikhs are silent;

kings are silent,

protectors of the faith,

rulers of the world,

all silent.

All these hypocrites

who take God's name

are silent!

(trans. Mahmood Jamal)

ai:

from Killing Floor

The machine-gun bullets

hit my wife in the legs,

then zig-zagged up her body.

I took the shears, cut open her gown

and lay on top of her for hours.

Blood soaked through my clothes

and when I tried to rise, I couldn't.

alexander wat:

from Persian Parables

By great, swift waters

on a stony bank

a human skull lay shouting:

Allah la ilah

And in that shout such horror

and such supplication

so great was its despair

that I asked the helmsman:

What is there left to cry for? Why is it still afraid?

What divine judgement could strike it again?

Suddenly a rising wave

took hold of the skull

and tossing it about

smashed it against the bank

Nothing is ever over

- the helmsman's voice was hollow -

and there is no bottom to evil.

(trans. Milosz and Nathan)

anna akhmatova:

Why did you poison the water

And mix my bread with dirt?

Why do you turn remnants of

freedom into a robbers' den?

Because I didn't violently curse

the bitter fate of friends,

because I stayed faithful

to my sad homeland?

Let it be so. The poet cannot exist

on this earth without the executioner's block.

Our fate is to wear the shirts of the penitent,

and to carry the candle and howl.

(trans. Richard McKane)

anna swir:

They Lay Dying Side By Side

'Your husband's lying here in the next bed.'

'Your wife's lying here next to you.'

They lay dying side by side,

each muffled up in his own suffering,

not looking at the other.

They grappled with death,

sweat pouring, teeth gnashing.

At dawn

the husband looked toward the window.

'Will I live to see the day?' he asked.

They died side by side,

without so much as a glance at each other.

(trans. Krynski and Maguire)

antoni slonimski:

To the Germans

Proudly looking at the ruins of the conquered city,

Carrying a short, bloody sword, from an empty yard

A Roman barbarian entered the house of Archimedes

When the legion of Marcellus conquered Syracuse.

Half-naked, breathing heavily, in his dusty helmet,

He stopped, his nostrils drinking in new blood and crime.

'Noli tangere circulos meos' -

Said Archimedes gently, drawing in the sand.

On the circle, along the diameter and the inscribed triangle

The blood ran in a dark and living sign.

Archimedes, defend yourself against the mercenary!

Archimedes, who are murdered today!

Your blood sank into the sand, but your spirit lives.

Not true. The spirit dies as well. Where do traces remain?

In the marble of your house are adders' nests.

The wind spins circles out of sand on ruined Hellas.

(trans. Scott and Milosz)

ariel dorfman:

Last Will and Testament

when they tell you

I'm not a prisoner

don't believe them.

They'll have to admit it

some day.

When they tell you

they released me

don't believe them.

They'll have to admit

it's a lie

some day.

When they tell you

I betrayed the party

don't believe them.

They'll have to admit

I was loyal

some day.

When they tell you

I'm in France

don't believe them.

Don't believe them when they show you

my false I.D.

don't believe them.

Don't believe them when they show you

the photo of my body,

don't believe them.

Don't believe them when they tell you

the moon is the moon,

if they tell you the moon is the moon,

that this is my voice on tape,

that this is my signature on a confession,

if they say a tree is a tree

don't believe them,

don't believe

anything they tell you

anything they swear to

anything they show you,

don't believe them.

And finally

when

that day

comes

when they ask you

to identify the body

and you see me

and a voice says

we killed him

the poor bastard died

he's dead,

when they tell you

that I am

completely absolutely definitely

dead

don't believe them,

don't believe them.

(trans. Edie Grossman)

arthur rimbaud:

Democracy

Our flag goes off to the unclean landscapes, and our dialect drowns out the drum.

In the cities we'll feed the most cynical prostitution. We'll massacre the logical revolts.

On to the lands of rain and spices! - in the service of the most hideous exploitation, industrial or military.

Goodbye here, hello anywhere. Draftees of good will, our philosophy will be ferocious; stupid in science, debauched in comfort; let the world go to hell. The real war. Forward, march!

(trans. Scott Bates)

attila gerecz

My Legacy

Insignificant poems.

Soot rising in the sad light

From a burial torch.

For the briefest time they will float like stains

On the freckled and indifferent sky.

(trans. Robert Bly)

barbara lamorticella:

War Pond

So now the frogs of war are croaking

from their pond of fire

and all the haters of peace, emboldened

croak back

They have only two notes:

Kill Take

John Ashcroft Orders the Bare Breast of Justice

Covered on the Floor of the Senate

he must want to

stop jiggling

wipe out round get

total control costs

more zeroes

than anybody can ever

possibly pay

so everyone ends up

totally (dead)

barbara zelano:

As our country

pushes us deeper

into the dark night

of the soul

in the name of god

I wonder if

Persephone and I

would be better off

to stay

underground.

bei dao:

All

All is fated

all cloudy,

all an endless beginning,

all a search for what vanishes,

all joys grave,

all griefs tearless,

every speech a repetition,

every meeting a first encounter,

all love buried in the heart,

all history prisoned in a dream,

all hope hedged with doubt,

all faith drowned in lamentation.

Every explosion heralds an instant of stillness,

every death reverberates forever.

(trans. Donald Finkel)

benjamin perét:

Little Song of the Maimed

Lend me your arm

to replace my leg

The rats ate it for me

at Verdun

I ate lots of rats

but they didn't give me back my leg

and that's why I was given the CROIX DE GUERRE

and a wooden leg

(trans. David Gascoyne)

bob kaufman:

from Benediction

America, I forgive you ... I forgive you

Nailing black Jesus to an imported cross

Every six weeks in Dawson, Georgia.

America, I forgive you ... I forgive you

Eating black children, I know your hunger.

America, I forgive you ... I forgive you

Burning Japanese babies defensively -

I realize how necessary it was.

Your ancestor had beautiful thoughts in his brain.

His descendants are experts in real estate.

Your generals have mushrooming visions.

Every day your people get more and more

Cars, televisions, sickness, death dreams.

You must have been great

Alive.

bodo murray:

Doggerell for a Washington Holiday Lay-Over

Two hours between trains in Washington, DC,

I decided to walk to the Capitol and see.

A cold sun, blind and blinding as a judge's eye

made me wear sunshades against the bright sky.

The Capitol building was cordoned like a hive

to construct a visitors' center for 2005.

Everything now was closed to the nation,

allowing me to see how little separation

lay between the Capitol and the High Court.

I wondered what John Adams would retort

that in 2000, 5 Justices had some fun

and made the Court and Presidency one.

Both buildings were a dull gray and sterile

though clean and monumentally Neo-Classical.

An eerie silence disturbed the December day;

President, Justices, and Congress were away.

What will happen when they return and find

someone's been snooping, one not of their mind?

They'll not notice; they're set on bombing

to a new unity, a sort of national embalming.

carolyn kizer:

Gulf War

Tout le ciel vert se meurt.

Le dernier arbre brûle.

--Valery

The whole green sky is dying. The last tree flares.

With a great burst of supernatural rose

Under a canopy of poisonous airs.

Could we imagine our return to prayers

To end in time before time's final throes,

The green sky is dying as the last tree flares?

But we were young in judgement, old in years

Who could make peace: but it was war we chose,

To spread its canopy of poisoning airs.

Not all our children's pleas and women's fears

Could steer us from this hell. And now God knows

His whole green sky is dying as it flares.

Our crops of wheat have turned to fields of tares

This dreadful century staggered to its close

And the sky dies for us, its poisoned heirs.

All rain was dust. Its granules were out of tears.

Throats burst as universal winter rose

To kill the whole green sky, the last tree bare

Beneath its canopy of poisoned air.

charles bukowski:

Communists

we ran the women in a straight line down the river

clinging to the fear in their rice-stupid heads

clinging to their infants

mice-like sucklings breathing in the air at odds of

one thousand to one;

we shot the men as they kneeled in a circle,

and the death of the men held almost no death,

it was somehow like a moviefilm,

men of spider arms and legs and a hunk of cloth

to cover the sexual organ.

men hardly born could hardly be killed

and there they were down there now, finally dead,

the sun straining on their faces of weird

puzzlement.

some of the women could fire rifles. we left a small

detachment to decide upon

them. then we fired up the unburned huts and moved on

to the next village.

charles hamilton sorley:

When you see millions of the mouthless dead

Across your dreams in pale battalions go,

Say not soft things as other men have said,

That you'll remember. For you need not so.

Give them not praise. For, deaf, how should they know

It is not curses heaped on each gashed head?

Nor tears. Their blind eyes see not your tears flow.

Nor honour. It is easy to be dead.

Say only this, 'They are dead.' Then add thereto,

'Yet many a better one has died before.'

Then, scanning all the o'ercrowded mass, should you

Perceive one face that you loved heretofore,

It is a spook. None wears the face you knew.

Great death had made all his for evermore.

david ignatow:

All Quiet

How come nobody is being bombed today?

I want to know, being a citizen

of this country and a family man.

You can't take my fate in your hands,

without informing me.

I can blow up a bomb or crush a skull -

whoever started this peace

without advising me

through a news leak

at which I could have voiced a protest,

running my whole family off a cliff.

david ray

Propaganda

How quickly the victors

rewrite history.

The big lie works.

Tell it again and again

loud and clear

as the truth seldom is.

There was no massacre

in Tiananmen Square

says the Chinese state radio

and within a week

National Public Radio

in Washington, DC,

says they have to agree,

see no hard evidence.

It is true - no massacre

in Tienanmen Square!

The new truth from China

is affirmed - "It never

happened that soldiers

fired directly

at the people."

But I still can't get

out of my eyes that sight

broadcast on TV to millions -

islands of blood -

truly a thousand red islands

in Tienanmen Square.

We saw it. Yet now

we are told

it did not happen

and the kids

are rounded up

as they were in Budapest.

The Chinese people are told

it did not happen.

We are told.

We begin to forget.

We agree to forget.

It does not take long

to fulfill our contract

to forget. Bloodstains

on stone - who remembers them

past a fortnight?

Not you, not me,

not the Chinese state radio,

not the USA state radio.

How quickly indeed

the victors rewrite!

Propaganda works - that is all

the truth ye know

and all ye need to know.

denise levertov:

What Were They Like?

(Questions and Answers)

1) Did the people of Viet Nam

use lanterns of stone?

2) Did they hold ceremonies

to reverence the opening of buds?

3) Were they inclined to rippling laughter?

4) Did they use bone and ivory,

jade and silver, for ornament?

5) Had they an epic poem?

6) Did they distinguish between speech and singing?

1) Sir, their light hearts turned to stone.

It is not remembered whether in gardens

stone lanterns illumined pleasant ways.

2) Perhaps they gathered once to delight in blossom,

but after the children were killed

there were no more buds.

3) Sir, laughter is bitter to the burned mouth.

4) A dream ago, perhaps. Ornament is for joy.

All the bones were charred.

5) It is not remembered. Remember,

most were peasants; their life

was in rice and bamboo.

When peaceful clouds were reflected in the paddies

and the water-buffalo stepped surely along terraces,

maybe fathers told their sons old tales.

When bombs smashed the mirrors

there was time only to scream.

6) There is an echo yet, it is said,

of their speech which was like a song.

It is reported their singing resembled

the flight of moths in moonlight.

Who can say? It is silent now.

diane di prima:

Les Americains

we are feral rare

as mountain wolves

our hearts are pure

& stupid we go down

pitted against our own

duo duo:

When the People Arose from Cheese

The songs ignored the blood of revolution.

August tautened like a cruel bow.

The malevolent son strode from the hut

with a pouch of tobacco and a parched throat.

Cruelly blinded, oxen dragged

blackening corpses behind them

like distended drums,

till all the sacrifices had been hidden away.

In the distance, another legion approaches.

(trans. Donald Finkel)

edward thomas:

The Cherry Trees

The cherry trees bend over and are shedding,

On the old road where all that passed are dead,

Their petals, strewing the grass as for a wedding

This early May morn when there is none to wed.

eleanor wilner:

Found in the Free Library

"Write as if you lived in an occupied country."

--Edwin Rolfe

And we were made afraid, and being afraid

we made him bigger than he was, a little man

and ignorant, wrapped like a vase of glass

in bubble wrap all his life, who never felt

a single lurch or bump, carried over

the rough surface of other lives like

the spoiled children of the sultans of old

in sedan chairs, on the backs of slaves,

the gold curtains on the chair

pulled shut against the dust and shit

of the road on which the people walked,

over whose heads, he rode, no more aware

than a wave that rattles pebbles on a beach.

And being afraid we forgot to notice

who pulled his golden strings, how

their banks overflowed while

the public coffers emptied, how

they stole our pensions, poured their smoke

into our lungs, how they beat our ploughshares

into swords, sold power to the lords of oil,

closed their fists to crush the children

of Iraq, took the future from our failing grasp

into their hoards, ignored our votes,

broke our treaties with the world,

and when our hungry children cried,

the doctors drugged them so they wouldn't fuss,

and prisons swelled enormously to hold

the desperate sons and daughters of the poor.

To us, they just said war, and war, and war.

For when they saw we were afraid,

how knowingly they played on every fear -

so conned, we scarcely saw their scorn,

hardly noticed as they took our funds, our rights,

and tapped our phones, turned back our clocks,

and then, to quell dissent, they sent....

(but here the document is torn)

ellie gunn:

Standing on My Mother's Grave

The earth, still raised,

Yields as

I step slowly from side to side.

Her body untouchable beneath

In a plain plywood box.

Tears come, hot and sad.

Will I ever feel ready

Waiting my turn

Like she was?

I shoulder a NO WAR sign from the trunk

And my daughter

Takes my picture

Standing on my mother's grave.

emily dickinson:

There is a pain - so utter -

It swallows substance up -

Then covers the Abyss with Trance -

So memory can step

Around - across - upon it -

As one within a swoon -

Goes safely - where an open eye -

Would drop Him - Bone by Bone.

fred nemo:

(after lucas murray)

in place of a fall harvest

there will be bodies buried

and unburied

frederic manning:

Grotesque

These are the damned circles Dante trod,

Terrible in hopelessness,

But even skulls have their humor,

An eyeless and sardonic mockery:

And we,

Sitting with streaming eyes in the acrid smoke,

That murks our foul, damp billet,

Chant bitterly, with raucous voices

As a choir of frogs

In hideous irony, our patriotic songs.

georg trakl:

Decline

Over the white pond

The wild birds have travelled on.

In the evening an icy wind blows from our stars.

Over our graves

The broken brow of the night inclines.

Under oak trees we sway in a silver boat.

Always the town's white walls resound.

Under arches of thorns,

O my brother, blind minute-hands,

We climb towards midnight.

(trans. Michael Hamburger)

gu cheng:

Yesterday

coils in the corner

like a black snake.

Cold while it lived,

it's colder dead.

Once it crept slowly

over so many hearts,

leaving a greenish trail,

concealing every

trace of blood.

It's dead at last,

secretly buried under

mountains of newsprint.

New hordes of characters

swarm like ants,

debating how

to circumvent

the second coming.

(trans. Donald Finkel)

h.d.:

from R.A.F.

If I dare recall

his last swift grave smile,

I award myself

some inch of ribbon

for valour,

such as he wore,

for I am stricken

as never before,

by the thought

of ineptitude, sloth, evil

that prosper,

while such as he fall.

hayden carruth:

Complaint and Petition

Mr. President: On a clear cold

morning I address you from a remote

margin of your dominion in plain-

style Yankee quatrains because

I don't know your exalted language

of power. I'm thankful for that. This

is a complaint and petition, sent

to you in the long-held right I claim

As a citizen. To recapitulate your

wrong-doings is unnecessary; the topic

is large and prominent and already

occupies the attention of historians

and political scholars, whose findings

will in the near future expose your

incontinent and maniacal ambition

for all to see. Let it suffice to

say that you have warped the law and

flouted the will and wisdom of the

people as no other has before you.

You have behaved precisely as a tin-pot

tyrant in any benighted, inglorious

corner of the earth. And now you are

deviously and corruptly manipulating

events in order to create war.

Let us speak plainly. You wish to

murder millions, as you yourself

have said, to appease your fury. We

oppose such an agenda: we, the people,

artists, artisans, builders, makers,

honest American men and women,

especially the poets, for whom I dare

to speak. We say, desist, resign,

hide yourself in your own shame,

lest otherwise the evil you have

loosed will destroy everything

and love will quit the world.

henrik visnapuu:

Lilac Time

Lilacs in the barrels of the guns:

Lilacs, lilac blooms.

My friends are fallen, are fallen

In lilac time.

Peering through blooms of lilac

The sniper tensed.

Spring burst out in lilac blooms to meet us

Across the field of slain.

Lilac trees behind the little houses -

Lilac trees.

Drowsy lilac bushes round our home -

Our charred home.

We marched to war in lilac time,

The lilac spring;

Bayonets glinting through the lilac sprays,

The lilac sprays.

We read our luck in lilac blooms of five,

In lilac blooms.

Life spoke to death in lilac blooms of five,

In lilac blooms.

(trans. Andres Pranspill)

homer:

from The Iliad

Curs'd is the man, and void of law and right,

Unworthy property, unworthy light,

Unfit for public rule, or private care,

That wretch, that monster, that delights in war:

Whose lust is murder, and whose horrid joy

To tear his country, and his kind destroy!

(trans. Alexander Pope)

ingeborg bachman:

Every Day

War is no longer declared,

but simply continued. The unheard of

has become the everyday. The hero

keeps clear of battles. The weak

are pushed to the front lines.

The uniform of the day is patience,

the decoration the paltry star

of hope above the heart.

It's awarded

when nothing more happens,

when drum-fire ceases,

when the enemy becomes invisible

and the shadow of eternal armament

covers the sky.

It's awarded

for desertion of flags,

for courage in the face of the friend,

for betraying unworthy secrets

and disregard

of every command.

(trans. Daniel Huws)

ion caraion:

At The Rotton Sea

We shall torture you, we shall kill you and we shall laugh

then we will be killed and others will laugh

we are old enough and shrewd enough

not to care

everything is truth, even the lie

everything is lie, even truth -

darkness begets itself.

(trans. Dorian and Urdang)

james schevill

Rat-Hunt for Terrorists

I walk my hate and let it harden there,

A plastic bomb to blast his hide-out high.

My time to purify the glowing air.

Search out that traitor with his injured stare

Whose terror causes innocence to die.

I walk my hate and let it harden there.

Answer his terror with the terror

Of my bomb, explosion answers every why.

My time to purify the glowing air.

Often at night I hear him scuttling to scare

Us from our longing dream of liberty.

I walk my hate and let it harden there.

Blow up his secret holes, strip him bare

Until his silence breaks into a cry.

My time to purify the glowing air.

We'll meet in rat-hunts in one burning glare,

Traitor and patriot fused in the bursting sky.

I walk my hate and let it harden there.

My time to purify the glowing air.

jános pilinszky:

Three-Coloured Banner

The first color? Just like a captive

at the moment sentenced is passed.

The second? Like lost

soldiers falling down

in huge, soft heaps.

And the third? The colour of the third -

it is you.

My beautiful three-coloured banner!

(trans. Peter Jay)

jesse bernstein:

from Main Street USA

It is all monotonous: the murder, the giant mice, the marching bands. It's a setup. Setup meaning everything is prearranged: the festive atmosphere, the killing, even the stars, everything that's said and felt here is rehearsed. Also, the clockwork life on Main Street is a setup for annihilation. Life on Main Street is the prototype for life all over America. Everything fits nice like a jigsaw puzzle - when the picture is done, it will be a picture of a sour empty planet. America has been a setup for suicide/global destruction from the start. Slaphappy clowns, lovable cops, politicians like take-charge dads from TV. We all fit into the picture puzzle somewhere. Guns to the temple, unbearable grinning - we'll get the signal.

jim shugrue:

On A Photograph of a Severed Hand

What is the sound of one hand

lying in the middle of a road

waving goodbye to its lost body?

How has it come this far from a hand

to mouth existence? How did it earn

its crust of callus? Is this

the right hand or the left? I cannot

tell. This is a photograph of a hand;

they could print it either way.

I've never seen a hand, alone,

open and empty in the middle

of a road, and pray to the god

they tell me has us all

in his good hands never to see one.

I know what history is. Our hand-

me-down bodies are mostly water,

and we spend them in tears and sweat.

Here is my hand. Take it,

and give me yours, while we

are still attached.

judith wright:

Weapon

The will to power destroys the power to will.

The weapon made, we cannot help but use it;

it drags us with its own momentum still.

The power to kill compounds the need to kill.

Grown out of hand, the heart cannot refuse it;

the will to power undoes the power to will.

Though as we strike we cry, "I did not choose it",

it drags us with its own momentum still.

In the one stroke we win the world and lose it.

The will to power destroys the power to will.

kenneth patchen

The Lions of Fire Shall Have Their Hunting

The lions of fire

Shall have their hunting in this black land

Their teeth shall tear at your soft throats

Their claws kill

O the lions of fire shall awake

And the valleys steam with their fury

Because you are sick with the dirt of your money

Because you are pigs rooting in the swill of your war

Because you are mean and sly and full of the pus of your pious murder

Because you have turned your faces from God

Because you have spread your filth everywhere

O the lions of fire

Wait in the crawling shadows of your world

And their terrible eyes are watching you

kojo laing:

from The same corpse

And the pounded man is the pounded country,

arrest me-O, don't arrest me-O

I will still live below your politics, cutting

the roots whenever I can, burning the pride with the ironies of history.

You cry I laugh, you laugh I cry, and

when the flag was upside down, no one noticed,

for the amazingly tasty fufu

had finally shrivelled the jaws that ate it.

lawrence ferlinghetti:

Speak Out

And a vast paranoia sweeps across the land

And America turns the attack on its Twin Towers

Into the beginning of the Third World War

The war with the Third World

And the terrorists in Washington

Are drafting all the young men

And no one speaks

And they are rousting out

All the ones with turbans

And they are flushing out

All the strange immigrants

And they are shipping all the young men

To the killing fields again

And no one speaks

And when they come to round up

All the great writers and poets and painters

The National Endowment of the Arts of Complacency

Will not speak

While all the young men

Will be killing all the young men

In the killing fields again

So now is the time for you to speak

All you lovers of liberty

All you lovers of the pursuit of happiness

All you lovers and sleepers

Deep in your private dreams

Now is the time for you to speak

O silent majority

Before they come for you

lawson inada:

The Legend of Protest

The F.B.I. swooped in early,

taking our elders in the process -

for "subversive" that and this.

People ask, "Why didn't you protest?"

Well, you might say: "They had hostages."

lenore kandel

from First They Slaughtered the Angels

First they slaughtered the angels

tying their thin white legs with wire cords

and

opening their silk throats with icy knives

They died fluttering their wings like chickens

and their immortal blood wet the burning earth...

lily brett:

Children II

There

were

thin children

fat children

brown-eyed

children

blue-eyed

green-eyed

wide-eyed children

you'd

think

it was harder

kill

the children

was

easy

they

were

flung in the air

for

target

practice

had

their heads

broken

against

the nearest

wall

they

bent others

across their knees

twigs

snapping their backs

the lucky ones

walked with their mothers

to the gas.

lisa bernstein:

Inscribed

As in the bible,

where one massacre precedes another,

she was born with her father's war

in her body.

There in the damp, clayey flesh:

a yellow field of grain

where the men lie bleeding.

Her father recognized

the yielding piece of land

he had walked on after the bombing,

stepping carefully through the wheat sheaves,

the dismembered

as slick as newborns.

He held her body

in his arms. When she was wet,

sometimes he thought she was bleeding

from the killing he saw.

He tilted the warm bottle

into her mouth.

lisa steinman:

The Old Woman's Poem

All summer the crows yelled at me from trees

in praise of the immaterial. Surly

I was by fall. The laundramat sign read:

'Re-grand opening'. And the world did open,

garden notebooks filling with weeds:

meadow rue, lady's mantle, the first page

left blank for Elijah. Just in case. Though

the papers lamented the weapons of mass

destruction, as if destruction did not

occur to us one by one. Now passing

cars sing in warm rain, but not well, what with

their tin ears, petulant and off-kilter.

I wake up with a furrowed heart. I am

as cultivated as the delicate

smell of carrots thinned early. I can taste

my childhood. Look: a small figure dances

in the yard. No, look: it's me. No, I'm here

rehearsing the dance in memory, trying

to imagine an older woman's life.

Somehow I've come to feel such an untoward

affection for my younger self, I could

just cry. Instead, I thin carrots, hearing

crows, living carefully . . . as if I might

otherwise forget to wake, eat, breathe.

lucille clifton:

buffalo war

war over

everybody gone home

nobody dead

everybody dying

lynn martin:

Cherry tree, holder of ten thousand

blossoms, ignites into a city of flames,

a candle at every window. I would

have let you glow like that, calm.

burning your own beauty until

you were nothing but light. For days

in rain and sun you would tremble,

perhaps. I would take you to places

open, where the yellow field widened

where the river loosened its tied-back

hair over its shoulders. There I would

say, live, flash until you become lake.

mang ke:

A Fallen Tree

On the branches of a fallen tree

a shroud of snow is melting

like the flesh of a corpse.

It halts me in my tracks,

afraid to come near.

I stand at a distance

staring, staring

until, at last,

when all the snow has melted,

I can see its skeleton on the ground.

(trans. Donald Finkel)

margareta waterman:

insult: warlords condescend to speak of poetry

lend us your magic, o poets, to serve our propaganda

every day, in the paper

in any town in this country

every day, in the paper

degradation of language so horrific

no word can mean anything

because public words

are so far

from ever meaning what they say

we all know these lies are lies

we read this newspeak, find the hidden facts

we all know that this government wasn't honestly elected

that it has no respect for us, no interest

in the public interest

that greed beyond sanity is its only value

we all know what the papers don't dare print

but don't expect poets

whose life is language and the clean use of words

to contribute to the hypocrisy

marina tsvetaeva

As you fought for your fatherland

You scratched Marina on your knife.

I was the first and also the last

In all the magnificence of your life.

I remember the night and your brilliant face

Enclosed in a military boxcar's hell.

I let my hair fly in the wind's wild chase.

In a chest I store your epaulettes well.

(trans. David McDuff)

mark twain:

Next the statesmen will invent cheap lies,

putting the blame upon the nation that is attacked,

and every man will be glad of those conscience-soothing falsities,

and will diligently study them,

and refuse to examine any refutations of them;

and thus he will by and by convince himself that the war is just,

and will thank God for the better sleep he enjoys

after this process of grotesque self-deception.

michael casey:

A Bummer

We were going single file

Through his rice paddies

And the farmer

Started hitting the lead track

With a rake

He wouldn't stop

The TC went to talk to him

And the farmer

Tried to hit him too

So the tracks went sideways

Side by side

Through the guy's fields

Instead of single file

Hard On, Proud Mary

Bummer, Wallace, Rosemary's Baby

The Rutgers Road Runner

And

Go Get Em-Done Got Em

Went side by side

Through the fields

If you have a farm in Vietnam

And a house in hell

Sell the farm

And go home

miroslav holub:

The Fly

She sat on a willow trunk

watching

part of the battle of Crécy,

the shouts,

the gasps,

the groans,

the tramping and the tumbling.

During the fourteenth charge

of the French cavalry

she mated

with a brown-eyed male fly

from Vadincourt.

She rubbed her legs together

as she sat on a disembowelled horse

meditating

on the immortality of flies.

With relief she alighted

on the blue tongue

of the Duke of Clervaux.

When silence settled

and only the whisper of decay

softly circled the bodies

and only

a few arms and legs

still twitched jerkily under the trees,

she began to lay her eggs

on the single eye

of Johann Uhr,

the Royal Armourer.

And thus it was

that she was eaten by a swift

fleeing

from the fires of Estrées.

(trans. George Theiner)

mohandas gandhi:

You assist an evil system most effectively

by obeying its orders and decrees.

An evil system never deserves such allegiance.

Allegiance to it means partaking of the evil.

A good person will resist an evil system with his or her whole soul.

naomi lazard:

Ordinance on Arrival

Welcome to you

who have managed to get here.

It's been a terrible trip;

you should be happy you have survived it.

Statistics prove that not many do.

You would like a bath, a hot meal,

a good night's sleep. Some of you

need medical attention.

None of this is available.

These things have always been

in short supply; now

they are impossible to obtain.

This is not

a temporary solution;

it is permanent.

Our condolences on your disappointment.

It is not our responsibility

everything you have heard about this place

is false. It is not our fault

you have been deceived,

ruined your health getting here.

For reasons beyond our control

there is no vehicle out.

nelly sachs:

Already embraced by the arm of heavenly solace

The insane mother stands

With the tatters of her torn mind

With the charred tinders of her burnt mind

Burying her dead child,

Burying her lost light,

Twisting her hands into urns,

Filling them with the body of her child from the air,

Filling them with his eyes, his hair from the air,

And with his fluttering heart -

Thern she kisses the air-born being

And dies!

(trans. Michael Roloff)

osip mandelstam:

You took away all the oceans and all the room,

You gave me my shoe-size in earth with bars around it.

Where did it get you? Nowhere.

You left me my lips, and they shape words, even in silence.

(trans. Brown and Merwin)

paul celan:

Crystal

Not on my lips look for your mouth,

not in front of the gate for the stranger,

not in the eye for the tear.

Seven nights higher red makes for red,

seven hearts deeper the hand knocks on the gate,

seven roses later plashes the fountain.

(trans. Michael Hamburger)

philip dacey:

Found Sonnet: Remarks Overheard at the Wall (Washington, D. C.)

Do you have someone here? Let me try

a different lens. Before we were born.

There it is. You mean all those people died?

We're underground. The war we didn't win.

They had a great big article on him. Oh

my god. Everything's picked up at the end of the day

and catalogued. This is not a TV show.

It was his first assignment. No fucking way.

Take a picture of us in the reflection. They're

not buried here. The order of death. It's simple.

This one could be a girl. He was making a career

out of it. Are you looking at this at all?

Excuse me. These walls are getting higher.

I've been here before. I can't believe it. My brother.

ralph chaplin:

Mourn Not the Dead

Mourn not the dead that in the cool earth lie -

Dust unto dust -

The calm sweet earth that mothers all who die

As all men must;

Mourn not your captive comrades who must dwell -

Too strong to strive -

Each in his steel-bound coffin of a cell,

Buried alive;

But rather mourn the apathetic throng -

The cowed and the meek -

Who see the world's great anguish and its wrong

And dare not speak!

randall jarrell

The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner

>From my mother's sleep I fell into the State,

And I hunched in its belly til my wet fur froze.

Six miles from earth, loosed from its dream of life,

I woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters.

When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose.

richard hugo:

On Hearing a New Escalation

>From time one I've been reading slaughter.

seeing the same bewildered face of a child

staring at nothing beside his dead mother

in Egypt, the pyramid blueprints approved,

the phrases of national purpose streaming

from the mouth of some automated sphynx.

Day on day, the same photographed suffering,

the bitterness, the opportune hate handed down

from Xerxes to Nixon, a line strong

as transatlantic cable and stale ideals.

Killing's still in though glory is out of style.

And what does it come to, this blood cold

in the streets and a history book printed

and bound with such cost-saving American

methods, the names and dates are soon bones?

Beware certain words: Enemy. Liberty. Freedom.

Believe those sounds and you're aiming a bomb.

robert peterson:

Ansbach

I listened to the guns

and shook

while Scobey bled

simply blinking swiftly

at the leaves

as if only

shocked

that the shell

should throw

his glasses and his steel

to the sun

leave him lightheaded

running breathless

among the aspens

robert pinsky:

BEFORE DISASTER (Yvor Winters, 1900-1967)

Evening traffic homeward burns

Swift and even on the turns,

Drifting weight in triple rows,

Fixed relation and repose.

This one edges out and by,

Inch by inch with steady eye.

But should error be increased,

Mass and moment are released;

Matter loosens, flooding blind,

Levels drivers to its kind.

Ranks of nations thus descend,

Watchful, to a stormy end.

By a moment's calm beguiled,

I have got a wife and child.

Fool and scoundrel guide the State.

Peace is whore to Greed and Hate.

Nowhere may I turn to flee:

Action is security.

Treading change with savage heel,

We must live or die by steel.

robinson jeffers:

Eagle Valor, Chicken Mind

Unhappy country, what wings you have! Even here,

Nothing important to protect, and ocean-far from the nearest enemy, what a cloud

Of bombers amazes the coast mountain, what a hornet-swarm of fighters,

And day and night the guns practicing.

Unhappy, eagle wings and beak, chicken brain.

Weep (it is frequent in human affairs), weep for the terrible magnificence of the means,

The ridiculous incompetence of the reasons, the bloody and shabby

Pathos of the result.

saul yurkievich

Sentence

doesn't read what he should

thinks what he shouldn't

doesn't say what he should

writes what he shouldn't

shouldn't read

shouldn't think

shouldn't speak

shouldn't write

should read what he should

should think what he should

should say what he should

should write what he should

what he shouldn't do is read

what he shouldn't do is think

what he shouldn't do is speak

what he shouldn't do is write

doesn't live as he should

lives but shouldn't

shouldn't live

(trans. Cola Franzen)

simone weil:

The winning of battles is not determined

by men who plan and deliberate,

who make a resolution and carry it out,

but by men drained of these faculties,

transformed,

fallen either to the level of inert matter,

which is all passivity,

or to the level of blind forces,

which are all momentum.

stanley kunitz:

Day of Foreboding

Great events are about to happen.

I have seen migratory birds

in unprecedented numbers

descend on the coastal plain,

picking the margins clean.

My bones are a family in their tent

huddled over a small fire

waiting for the uncertain signal

to resume the long march.

steve mason:

My soul just did

what most souls did.

just disappeared one afternoon

when I was in a firefight.

Just "walked away" in the scuffle

like a Dunhill lighter

off the deck of a redneck bar...

taban lo liyong:

blood iron and trumpets

forward we march

(others fall on the way)

blood iron and trumpets

we shall hack to kill and cure

blood iron and trumpets

singers of the datsun blue

forward we drive breaking the records

blood iron and trumpets

let bullets find their targets and the earth be softened

blood iron and trumpets

let the dogs of war rejoice

and the carrion birds feed

we are reducing population sexplosion

blood iron and trumpets

the uniformed machines are around

put on your helmet iron and the rest

blood iron and trumpets

only thru fire can we be baptized to mean business

so once again

blood iron and trumpets

we shall always march along

blood iron and trumpets

blood alone

tadeusz rozewicz:

Leave Us Alone

Forget about us

about our generation

live like human beings

forget about us

we envied

plants and stones

we envied dogs

I would like to be a rat

I used to say to her

I would like not to be

I would like to fall asleep

and wake up after the war

she would say with her eyes shut

forget about us

don't ask about our youth

leave us alone

tsuboi shigeji

Silent, but ...

I may be silent, but

I'm thinking.

I may not talk, but

Don't mistake me for a wall.

(trans. Bownan and Thwaite)

w. b. yeats:

We can't see. But feel some awful thing

We had fed the heart on fantasies,

The heart's grown brutal from the fare;

More substance in our enmities

Than in our love...

w. s. merwin:

Statement

It would not have been possible for me ever to trust someone who

acquired office by the shameful means Mr. Bush and his abettors resorted

to in the last presidential election. His nonentity was rapidly becoming

more apparent than ever when the catastrophe of Sept. 11, 2001, provided