Iraq War Grief Daily Witness (photo) Day 296

“[I]n times of crisis it’s interesting that people don’t turn to the novel or say, ‘We should all go out to a movie,’ or ‘Ballet would help us.’ It’s always poetry. What we want to hear is a human voice speaking directly in our ear.”

Billy Collins, U.S. Poet Laureate (2001-2003) speaking to the New York Times, as quoted in The Dead Beat by Marilyn Johnson

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.

april is national poetry month

image and poem below the fold

An Iraqi carries his daughter who was wounded in a roadside bomb that exploded near her house in Baghdad. Iraqi politicians were to meet to discuss the formation of a national unity government amid mounting US pressure for no more procrastination over three months after elections.
(AFP/Ahmad Al-Rubaye)

Basket of Figs
by Ellen Bass

Bring me your pain, love. Spread
it out like fine rugs, silk sashes,
warm eggs, cinnamon
and cloves in burlap sacks. Show me

the detail, the intricate embroidery
on the collar, tiny shell buttons,
the hem stitched the way you were taught,
pricking just a thread, almost invisible.

Unclasp it like jewels, the gold
still hot from your body. Empty
your basket of figs. Spill your wine.

That hard nugget of pain, I would suck it,
cradling it on my tongue like the slick
seed of pomegranate. I would lift it

tenderly, as a great animal might
carry a small one in the private
cave of the mouth.

– – –
Join CIVIC’s “I Care” photo campaign

put a meaningful magnet on your car or metal filing cabinet

read Ilona’s important new blog – PTSD Combat

view the pbs newshour silent honor roll (with thanks to jimstaro at booman.)

take a private moment to light one candle among many (with thanks to TXSharon)

support Veterans for Peace
support the Iraqi people
support the Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict (CIVIC)
support CARE
support the victims of torture
remember the fallen
support Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors – TAPS
support Gold Star Families for Peace
support the fallen
support the troops
support Iraq Veterans Against the War
support Military families Speak Out
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
witness every day

14 Comments

RubDMC on April 21, 2006 at 5:54 am

Click on the candle to copy the image into your own comment (you can leave it on my server), and/or rate this one – not for mojo, but to leave a small mark after taking this moment.

” I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned.”
from Dirge Without Music
by Edna St. Vincent Millay

supersoling on April 21, 2006 at 6:09 am

ask on April 21, 2006 at 6:15 am

3 Iraqis Killed in Baghdad

BrendaStewart on April 21, 2006 at 7:42 am

Peace……….

shermanesqe on April 21, 2006 at 8:21 am

cotterperson on April 21, 2006 at 8:31 am

Impeach NOW.

alohaleezy on April 21, 2006 at 9:30 am

We must get our ac t together and DEMAND that these bastards are frogmarched out of the WHite House NOW!

Fire Rumsfeld! for starters.

James 438 on April 21, 2006 at 10:04 am

and for poetry month:

Look Down Fair Moon

Look down fair moon and bathe this scene,
Pour softly down night’s nimbus floods on faces ghastly, swollen, purple,
On the dead on their backs with arms toss’d wide,
Pour down your unstinted nimbus sacred moon.

–Walt Whitman, c. 1865

dada on April 21, 2006 at 11:12 am

Peace

Man Eegee on April 21, 2006 at 12:37 pm

…to heal a grieving heart, not for a little girl’s leg. This must end.

Arcturus on April 21, 2006 at 4:57 pm

An antinuclear stance has long given me an “interest” in the atomic bomb — this piece of writing, however, contains its own most valuable truth. Stein wrote this piece the year she died — 1946 — & it was first published in 1947 in the Yale Poetry Review.

REFLECTION ON THE ATOMIC BOMB

They asked me what I thought of the atomic bomb. I said I had not been able to take any interest in it.

I like to read detective and mystery stories, I never get enough of them but whenever one of them is or was about death rays and atomic bombs I never could read them. What is the use, if they are really as destructive as all that there is nothing left and if there is nothing there nobody to be interested and nothing to be interested about. If they are not destructive as all that then they are just a little more or less destructive than other things and that means that in spite of all destruction there are always lots left on this earth to be interested or to be willing and the thing that destroys is just one of the things that concerns the people inventing it or the people starting it off, but really nobody else can do anything about it so you just have to live along like always, so you see the atomic [bomb] is not at all interesting, not any more interesting than any other machine, and machines are only interesting in being invented or in what they do, so why be interested. I never could take any interest in the atomic bomb, I just couldn’t any more than in everybody’s secret weapon. That it has to be secret makes it dull and meaningless. Sure it will destroy a lot and kill a lot, but it’s the living that are interesting not the way of killing them, because if there were not a lot left living how could there be any interest in destruction. Alright, that is the way I feel about it. And really way down that is the way everybody feels about it. They think they are interested about the atomic bomb but they really are not not any more than I am. Really not. They may be a little scared, I am not so scared, there is so much to be scared of so what is the use of bothering to be scared, and if you are not scared the atomic bomb is not interesting.

Everybody gets so much information all day long that they lose their common sense. They listen so much that they forget to be natural. This is a nice story.

–1946

(from Reflection on the Atomic Bomb: Vol. I of the Previously Uncollected Writings of Gertrude Stein, edited by Robert Bartlett Haas, Black Sparrow Press, 1973)

jimstaro on April 21, 2006 at 5:03 pm

Light A Candle For
Peace, Tolerance, Understanding
and For The Children – Innocence Lost!

GI Special 4D21 Sir No Sir Available To ALL In Sevices.pdf

Add To Your Blog Rolls
NEIL YOUNG – Living With War

The Soldiers

Down some cold field in a world unspoken
the young men are walking together, slim and tall,
and though they laugh to one another, silence is not broken;
there is no sound however clear they call.
They are speaking together of what they loved in vain here,
but the air is too thin to carry the things they say.
They were young and golden, but they came on pain here,
and their youth is age now, their gold is grey.
Yet their hearts are not changed, and they cry to one another,
‘What have they done with the lives we laid aside?
Are they young with our youth, gold with our gold, my brother?
Do they smile in the face of death, because we died?’
Down some cold field in a world uncharted
the young seek each other with questioning eyes.
They question each other, the young, the golden hearted,
of the world that they were robbed of in their quiet paradise.
Humbert Wolfe, Requiem: The Soldier (1916)

jimstaro on April 21, 2006 at 6:25 pm

Remembering Bill Coffin
Bill Moyers
April 21, 2006

Damnit Janet on April 21, 2006 at 6:42 pm

Incarcerate the War Bastards Immediately.

Going into portland tonight to march… should be interesting.

XOXOX

Stay safe you all!!!

RubDMC on April 21, 2006 at 5:54 am

Click on the candle to copy the image into your own comment (you can leave it on my server), and/or rate this one – not for mojo, but to leave a small mark after taking this moment.

” I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned.”
from Dirge Without Music
by Edna St. Vincent Millay
supersoling on April 21, 2006 at 6:09 am
ask on April 21, 2006 at 6:15 am

3 Iraqis Killed in Baghdad
BrendaStewart on April 21, 2006 at 7:42 am

Peace……….
shermanesqe on April 21, 2006 at 8:21 am
cotterperson on April 21, 2006 at 8:31 am

Impeach NOW.
alohaleezy on April 21, 2006 at 9:30 am

We must get our ac t together and DEMAND that these bastards are frogmarched out of the WHite House NOW!

Fire Rumsfeld! for starters.
James 438 on April 21, 2006 at 10:04 am

and for poetry month:

Look Down Fair Moon

Look down fair moon and bathe this scene,
Pour softly down night’s nimbus floods on faces ghastly, swollen, purple,
On the dead on their backs with arms toss’d wide,
Pour down your unstinted nimbus sacred moon.

–Walt Whitman, c. 1865
dada on April 21, 2006 at 11:12 am

Peace
Man Eegee on April 21, 2006 at 12:37 pm

…to heal a grieving heart, not for a little girl’s leg. This must end.
Arcturus on April 21, 2006 at 4:57 pm

An antinuclear stance has long given me an “interest” in the atomic bomb — this piece of writing, however, contains its own most valuable truth. Stein wrote this piece the year she died — 1946 — & it was first published in 1947 in the Yale Poetry Review.

REFLECTION ON THE ATOMIC BOMB

They asked me what I thought of the atomic bomb. I said I had not been able to take any interest in it.

I like to read detective and mystery stories, I never get enough of them but whenever one of them is or was about death rays and atomic bombs I never could read them. What is the use, if they are really as destructive as all that there is nothing left and if there is nothing there nobody to be interested and nothing to be interested about. If they are not destructive as all that then they are just a little more or less destructive than other things and that means that in spite of all destruction there are always lots left on this earth to be interested or to be willing and the thing that destroys is just one of the things that concerns the people inventing it or the people starting it off, but really nobody else can do anything about it so you just have to live along like always, so you see the atomic [bomb] is not at all interesting, not any more interesting than any other machine, and machines are only interesting in being invented or in what they do, so why be interested. I never could take any interest in the atomic bomb, I just couldn’t any more than in everybody’s secret weapon. That it has to be secret makes it dull and meaningless. Sure it will destroy a lot and kill a lot, but it’s the living that are interesting not the way of killing them, because if there were not a lot left living how could there be any interest in destruction. Alright, that is the way I feel about it. And really way down that is the way everybody feels about it. They think they are interested about the atomic bomb but they really are not not any more than I am. Really not. They may be a little scared, I am not so scared, there is so much to be scared of so what is the use of bothering to be scared, and if you are not scared the atomic bomb is not interesting.

Everybody gets so much information all day long that they lose their common sense. They listen so much that they forget to be natural. This is a nice story.

–1946

(from Reflection on the Atomic Bomb: Vol. I of the Previously Uncollected Writings of Gertrude Stein, edited by Robert Bartlett Haas, Black Sparrow Press, 1973)
jimstaro on April 21, 2006 at 5:03 pm

Light A Candle For
Peace, Tolerance, Understanding
and For The Children – Innocence Lost!

GI Special 4D21 Sir No Sir Available To ALL In Sevices.pdf

Add To Your Blog Rolls
NEIL YOUNG – Living With War

The Soldiers

Down some cold field in a world unspoken
the young men are walking together, slim and tall,
and though they laugh to one another, silence is not broken;
there is no sound however clear they call.
They are speaking together of what they loved in vain here,
but the air is too thin to carry the things they say.
They were young and golden, but they came on pain here,
and their youth is age now, their gold is grey.
Yet their hearts are not changed, and they cry to one another,
‘What have they done with the lives we laid aside?
Are they young with our youth, gold with our gold, my brother?
Do they smile in the face of death, because we died?’
Down some cold field in a world uncharted
the young seek each other with questioning eyes.
They question each other, the young, the golden hearted,
of the world that they were robbed of in their quiet paradise.
Humbert Wolfe, Requiem: The Soldier (1916)
- jimstaro on April 21, 2006 at 6:25 pm
  
  Remembering Bill Coffin
  Bill Moyers
  April 21, 2006
Damnit Janet on April 21, 2006 at 6:42 pm

Incarcerate the War Bastards Immediately.

Going into portland tonight to march… should be interesting.

XOXOX

Stay safe you all!!!

Iraq War Grief Daily Witness (photo) Day 296

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RubDMC

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