this diary is dedicated to all who suffer because of war and other disasters
cross-posted at DailyKos, Booman Tribune, European Tribune, and My Left Wing.
images and poem below the fold
Relatives react during the funeral ceremony for pilgrims killed on Wednesday in Sadr City Shiite district in Baghdad, Thursday, Sept. 1, 2005. Thousands of people attended funerals Thursday for some of the hundreds of Shiite pilgrims killed in a stampede on a Baghdad bridge during a religious procession, as criticism mounted against the Shiite-led government for failing to prevent the tragedy.
(AP Photo/Karim Kadim)
Residents wait to be rescued from the floodwaters of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans September 1, 2005. Chaos and lawlessness hampered the evacuation of New Orleans on Thursday and a U.S. senator said thousands may have died in Louisiana after Hurricane Katrina devastated the U.S. Gulf Coast. In New Orleans, shell-shocked officials tried to regain control of the historic jazz city reduced to a swampy ruin by Monday’s storm. Bodies floated in the flooded city and authorities still could only guess how many people had died. REUTERS/David J. Phillip/Pool
At a Fishing Settlement
by Alistair Campbell
October, and a rain-blurred face,
And all the anguish of that bitter place.
It was a bare sea-battered town,
With its one street leading down
Onto a shingly beach. Sea winds
Had long picked the dark hills clean
Of everything but tussock and stones
And pines that dropped small brittle cones
Onto a soured soil. And old houses flanking
The street hung poised like driftwood planking
Blown together and could not outlast
The next window-shuddering blast
From the storm-whitened sea.
It was bitterly cold; I could see
Where muffled against gusty spray
She walked the clinking shingle; a stray
Dog whimpered and pushed a small
Wet nose into my hand – that is all.
Yet I am haunted by that face,
That dog, and that bare bitter place.
– – –
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