image: An Iraqi boy looks at the body of a dead civilian at a local hospital in the northern Iraqi city of Samarra. At least 23 people were killed when a suicide bomber blew himself up in a busy kebab restaurant near Baghdad’s Green Zone, one of a string of attacks across the country that claimed a total of 43 lives.(AFP/Dia Hamid)
Cross-posted at DailyKos, Booman Tribune, and European Tribune.
image and poem below the fold
The Birth of Shaka
by Oswald Mtshali
His baby cry
was of a cub
tearing the neck
of the lioness
because he was fatherless.
The gods
boiled his blood
in a clay pot of passion
to course in his veins.
His heart was shaped into an ox shield
to foil every foe.
Ancestors forged
his muscles into
thongs as tough
as water bark
and nerves
as sharp as
syringa thorns.
His eyes were lanterns
that shone from the dark valleys of Zululand
to see white swallows
coming across the sea.
His cry to two assassin brothers:
“Lo! you can kill me
but you’ll never rule this land!”
– – –
support the Iraqi people
support the Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict (CIVIC)
support CARE
support the victims of torture
support the fallen
support the troops
support the troops and the Iraqi people
read `This is what John Kerry did today,’ the diary by lawnorder that prompted this series
read Riverbend’s blog – `Bagdhad Burning’
read Dahr Jamail’s Iraq Dispatches
read Today in Iraq
witness every day
