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
cross-posted at MyLeftWing, BooMan Tribune, and my blog.
image and poem below the fold
Firemen hose down a burning building after twin car bomb attacks at Shorja market in Baghdad February 12, 2007.
(Thaier al-Sudani/Reuters)
MORE IMPORTANT THAN THE DESIGN OF CITIES WILL BE THE DESIGN OF THEIR DECAY
by Tessa Rumsey
Where did you grow, before your roots took hold in the garden?
Curiouser and curiouser, this allegiance you seem to have with rocks.
Bluish blooms bathed in perfection, the moon shines fresh as you melt away.
*
Loneliness is a laboratory; its territory is forever defined; for reasons beyond our conviction It cannot be lessened; only redirected and made to resemble a crumbling heaven or the year’s Grand delusion: I shall no longer want for that which left me long ago–go slow, said the soul, That you may know the streets of your abandoned city more intimately than any joy Or cherished season. We were in collusion, this city and I, creating a mythology of desolation; Feeling utterly evacuated; yet methodically structured; in a post-Roman Empire; previously Doomed sort of way–and what did the soul say, but know it better, then in a fever, go deeper. There are days, I told the translator, when the veil drops and I am no longer inside the No-Place most familiar, built by me long ago, and I walk through the world as if made real By the existence of others and the casual way a crowd pauses together on a concrete curbside– Perhaps one of them is weeping, perhaps another will gently reach out and twist a knife Into my heart and we will lock eyes, and I will fall to my knees, and for a moment He will hold me. What will I remember? The cold blade’s cruel demeanor? My body As it seizures? Or the gesture of my destroyer, showing me that in this life, I was not alone.
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