this diary is dedicated to all who suffer because of war
we love and support our troops, just as we love and support the Iraqi people – without exception, or precondition, or judgment
we have no sympathy for the devil
image and poem below the fold
Men look through the glass window of a bakery after an attack by gunmen in Baghdad, November 16, 2006.
(Mahmoud Raouf Mahmoud/Reuters)
A boy looks at blood, clothes and footwear belonging to bakers after an attack by gunmen in Baghdad, November 16, 2006.
(Mahmoud Raouf Mahmoud/Reuters)
Relatives gather at the morgue at Kindi hospital to collect bodies of the victims of a bakery shooting in Baghdad, Iraq, Thursday, Nov. 16, 2006. Gunmen opened fire on a bakery, killing nine people.
(AP Photo/Karim Kadim)
Credo
by Andrew Zawacki
You say wind is only wind
& carries nothing nervous
in its teeth.
I do not believe it.
I have seen leaves desist
from moving
although the branches
move, & I
believe a cyclone has secrets
the weather is ignorant of.
I believe
in the violence of not knowing.
I’ve seen a river lose its course
& join itself again,
watched it court
a stream & coax the stream
into its current,
& I have seen
rivers, not unlike
you, that failed to find
their way back.
I believe the rapport
between water & sand, the advent
from mirror to face.
I believe in rain
to cover what mourns,
in hail that revives
& sleet that erodes, believe
whatever falls
is a figure of rain
& now I believe in torrents that take
everything down with them.
The sky calls it quits,
or so I believe,
when air, or earth, or air
has had enough.
I believe in disquiet,
the pressure it plies, believe a cloud
to govern the limits of night.
I say I,
but little is left to say it, much less
mean it–
& yet I do.
Let there be
no mistake:
I do not believe
things are reborn in fire.
They’re consumed by fire
& the fire has a life of its own.