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.
image and poem below the fold
Hospital workers clean up pools of blood after receiving victims of a roadside bombing in the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk September 22, 2005. Police said that two people were killed and three more wounded when a roadside bomb exploded on Wednesday night in central Kirkuk.
REUTERS/Slahaldeen Rasheed
Every Infant’s Blood
by Graham Duncan
Every tree is an ancestor tree,
not just grandfather redwoods.
Every sapling, every sprout,
carries that majesty,
the dissolution of stone and bone,
of mold and leaf and tongue,
flowing as freely as blood
in earth’s leisurely body,
the oldest and slowest rhythms
crooning in its ways.
But who can sing with maple and beech
in the cold wind’s demanding meters?
The crimson and gold of their dying fall
choke the singing of our blood.
We cling to the tree of our moment,
weep for its unleaving; our mothers
and brothers, so recently fallen,
neither flow in the roots
nor creep upward under the bark
nor come to rest in orderly rings.
We know where our flesh is buried,
know the place and mark it,
but also know the repetend,*
know the flesh will bend
to the root, creep in the trunk,
sing in the leaf,
fall and repeat itself,
old as every wizened oak,
old as the sap and sea salt
in every infant’s blood.
– – –
*repetend: A word, sound, or phrase that is repeated; a refrain.
– – –
support the Iraqi people
support the Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict (CIVIC)
support CARE
support the victims of torture
remember the fallen
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 Bagdhad Burning
read Dahr Jamail’s Iraq Dispatches
read Today in Iraq
Leonard Clark’s blog has been taken down
witness every day
