Iraq War Grief Daily Witness (photo) Day 227

this diary is dedicated to all who suffer because of war and other disasters

we honor courage in all its forms

cross-posted at DailyKos, Booman Tribune, European Tribune, and My Left Wing.

images and poem below the fold

U.S. Army Honor Guards carry the American flag wrapped coffin of U.S. Army Sgt. Myla Maravillosa during her funeral Thursday, Jan. 19, 2006 in Inabanga, in Bohol province in central Philippines. Sgt. Maravillosa was the first Filipino-American woman killed in Iraq.
(AP Photo/Pat Roque)

Widow Rosali Rodon, left, cries as she is presented with a box containing an American flag and the honor medals of her husband, U.S. Army Sgt. Jason Lopez Reyes, at his burial ceremony in his hometown of Hatillo, Puerto Rico, Wednesday, Jan. 18, 2006. Lopez died of wounds sustained Jan. 5 when a roadside bomb exploded near his convoy on the outskirts of the Iraqi capital, Baghdad. At least 47 Puerto Rican soldiers have died in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars since 2001.
(AP Photo/Andres Leighton)

Alaska Army National Guard Spc. Jacob Melson’s mother, Teresa Melson, left, his widow, Sarah Melson, center and his father Alaska Army National Guard Capt. Mark Melson, center right, hold the flags given to them during a funeral for the fallen Guardsman at the Fort Richardson National Cemetery in Anchorage, Alaska, Friday Jan. 20, 2006. Melson died when an Army National Guard helicopter crashed in Iraq on Jan. 7, 2006 killing him and three other Alaska Army National Guardsmen. The four Alaska Army National Guard crew members were among the 12 people who died in the helicopter crash.
(AP Photos/Al Grillo)

Vietnam Epic Treatment
by Donald Revell

It doesn’t matter
A damn what’s playing–
In the dead of winter
You go, days of 1978 –
79, and we went
Because the soldiers were beautiful
And doomed as Asian jungles
Kept afire Christ-like
In the hopeless war
I did not go to in the end
Because it ended.

The 20th-century?
It was a war
Between peasants on the one side,
Hallucinations on the other.
A peasant is a fire that burns
But is not consumed.
His movie never ends.
It will be beautiful
Every winter of our lives, my love,
As Christ crushes fire into his wounds
And the wounds are a jungle.
Equally, no matter when their movies end,
Hallucinations destroy the destroyers.
That’s all.
There has never been a President of the United States.

And the 21st-century?
Hallucination vs. hallucination
In cold battle, in dubious battle,
No battle at all because the peasants
Have gone away far
Into the lost traveler’s dream,
Into a passage from Homer,
A woodcutter’s hillside
Peacetime superstition movie.
On a cold night, Hector.
On a cold night, Achilles.
Around the savage and the maniac
The woodcutter draws a ring of fire.
It burns all winter long.
He never tires of it
And for good reason:
Every face of the flames is doomed and beautiful;
Every spark that shoots out into the freezing air
Is God’s truth
Given us all over again
In the bitter weather of men’s
Hallucinations. There has never been
A President of the United States.
There has never been a just war.
There has never been any life
Beyond this circle of firelight
Until now if now is no dream but an Asia.
– – –
put a meaningful magnet on your car or metal filing cabinet