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


A Kurdish boy walks down the stands of a stadium turned into a displacement camp in Kirkuk, 290 kilometers (180 miles) north of Baghdad, Iraq, Sunday, Feb. 11, 2007. Even as the world focuses on Baghdad’s security, a series of bombings here may be the long-feared start of a second deadly war in Iraq, this one between Kurds and Arabs, both with claims on a territory atop one of the world’s largest oil reserves.
(AP Photo/Yahya Ahmed)

from Last Things
by William Meredith
for Robert Lowell

IV
At the edge of the Greek world, I think, was a cliff
To which fallen gods were chained, immortal.
Time is without forgiveness, but intermittently
He sends the old, sentimental, hungry
Vulture compassion to gnaw on the stone
Vitals of each of us, even the young, as if
To ready each of us, even the old, for an unthinkable
Event he foresees for each of us–a reckoning, our own.

– – –

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