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
Body bags containing torture and shooting victims lie outside Yarmouk hospital morgue in Baghdad December 19, 2006. Police found 44 bodies in various parts of Baghdad over the past 24 hours, an interior ministry source said.
REUTERS/Ali Jasim (IRAQ)
A body is seen through the entrance to the Yarmouk hospital morgue in Baghdad, Iraq, Tuesday, Dec. 19, 2006. Iraqi police said they had found 44 bodies across the capital Monday, some of them handcuffed, blindfolded and showing signs of torture.
(AP Photo/Samir Mizban)
An Iraqi mortician inspects bodies in a hospital in Baqouba, 60 kilometers (35 miles) northeast of Baghdad, Iraq, Tuesday, Dec. 19, 2006. The Iraqi police found twelve bodies of victims of sectarian violence dumped on the streets in various parts of Baqouba Monday.
(AP Photo/Adem Hadei)
A man cries as he waits to claim the bodies of his two sons, who were among the 44 bodies found on Monday, outside Yarmouk hospital morgue in Baghdad December 19, 2006. Police found 44 bodies in various parts of Baghdad over the past 24 hours, an interior ministry source said.
REUTERS/Ali Jasim (IRAQ)
Last Century
by Wyatt Prunty
Last century we took a lot of shots
Of what we did, framing things for Look and Life
So we could see us and our lot Riveting the lattice of a skyline
Or walking the I beams of infinite rooms
Over Manhattan, Cleveland, Washington–
Oh elevated light.
We were amassing works–bridges and dams,
Ike’s interstates, highrises; raising tons
Out of a continent unfolding by
Mountain and pit, plain and gradient river,
The convex sky bottling cirrus highs
And the steep cumuli of moody weather,
Oh century of light.
Back then we were stout realists working out
All manner of the world as one-to-one,
The aerials that Margaret Bourke-White got
Of factories and bombed-out towns,
Also the gaunt subtractive stares by Evans,
Whose dust bowl poor became our luminous
Internal weather.
And then at Buchenwald there were those faces
Of ourselves–fed guards, starved Poles and Jews,
The citizens of Weimar just trucked in
Bearing the stares of deformed children,
As now our lenses focused on the krill
And undertow of the swallowing real
Weather of enlightenment.
Add in atomic white, the napalm blind . . .
An overbright disequilibrium
Had settled in, a kind of countermind,
Blind as those guards at Buchenwald, darkroom
And looking up, gashed faces wide with fear,
All interrogatives frozen where
Someone holds a light
For focusing Margaret Bourke-White;
While the two guards, deserving or not, stripped
To bloody underwear, still looking up
In horror at what’s coming next, hear “Pop!”
Thanks to the flash, so everyone will see
Us taking our turn at victory,
Oh century.
