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

we acknowledge the power to act that is in us

images and poem below the fold

A man covers a child killed at Bab al-Sheik market in central Baghdad, Iraq, Tuesday, Jan. 16, 2007. Two bombs were detonated five minutes apart Tuesday in a used motorcycle marketplace in central Baghdad, killing at least 15 people and wounding 74 others, police said. The first bomb was attached to a motorcycle in the market. As the curious gathered to look at the aftermath, a suicide car bomber drove into the crowd and blew up his vehicle.
(AP Photo/Karim Kadim)

from Apricots Died Young
by Chiao Meng
translated by David Hinton  

Apricots died young in blossoms still nipples. Frost cut them free, and their scattering made me

mourn the child I had long ago,

so I wrote this poem.

1

Don’t fondle these pearls.  O hands of ice,
fondle pearls and they’re quick to fly.

And don’t cut spring short, sudden frost.
Cut spring short and that blaze of beauty’s lost.

Still nipples, tiny blossoms fall in tatters
tinged pure as a child’s robes long ago.

I gather them, never filling my hands,
and at dusk, grief empty, return home.

3

It must be this same thread of tears
piercing the hearts of spring trees:

before blossoms opened anywhere,
flake after flake fell to the blade.

Spring’s life never lasts, it’s true,
but my lament over frost is already

impossibly deep.  Instead of blossoms
bathing streams, tears bathe robes.

4

At our son’s birth, the moon was dark,
and when he died, it began to shine.

Moon and child, they stole each other
away.  O scarcely lived child of mine,

what’s it like, blossom after blossom,
if not endless blue heavens in lament,

sweetness falling into earthen dust,
nothing left to bloom in other times?

8

Calamity infecting a child is natural:
blossoms mostly fail.  Still, I gather

ruins of the heart, a spent old man
cradling love’s debris in endless night.

What can be said once sound dies away?
And once hope’s dead, song’s useless.

Old and sick–no child, no grandchild,
I stand like bundled firewood, alone.