image: Bodies arrive at the main hospital after a suicide bomber blew himself up outside the Al-Rafidain bank in Kirkuk. The ethnic tinderbox of Kirkuk in northern Iraq was gripped by more violence after a suicide bombing at a bank in the city killed at least 20 people.(AFP/Marwan Ibrahim)
Cross-posted at DailyKos, Booman Tribune, and European Tribune.
image and poem below the fold
The Dream
by Mikhaíl Lérmontov
translated by A.S. Kline
Noon heat, a gorge in Daghestan,
I lay still, a bullet in my chest:
The deep wound was still red-hot,
blood seeped, drop by drop.
I lay lonely on the gorge’s sand,
the cliff-ledges towered around,
the sun burned their yellow heights,
and I – I slept like the dead.
And I dreamed of a midnight ball,
in my homeland, gleaming light,
young girls wreathed in flowers
talking about me, with delight.
But one sat there, deep in thought,
not part of the joyful theme,
and her young soul, God knows,
was plunged in the saddest dream.
Her dream, a gorge in Daghestan…
in that gorge a friend lay dead,
a black wound in his chest:
of dark blood a cooling stream…
– – –
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
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