RubDMC, Author at Progress Pond

Iraq War Grief Daily Witness (photo) Day 8

image: a bus burns following a car bomb explosion in Iraq

one way to support the Iraqi people
Support the Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict (CIVIC)
many other ways to support the troops and the Iraqi people
one way to support victims of torture
one way to support the troops
one way to witness every day
one way to support the fallen

image and words below the fold

from Little Gidding
by T.S. Eliot

Ash on an old man’s sleeve
Is all the ash the burnt roses leave.
Dust in the air suspended
Marks the place where a story ended.
Dust inbreathed was a house-
The walls, the wainscot and the mouse,
The death of hope and despair,
This is the death of air.

There are flood and drouth
Over the eyes and in the mouth,
Dead water and dead sand
Contending for the upper hand.
The parched eviscerate soil
Gapes at the vanity of toil,
Laughs without mirth.
This is the death of earth.

Water and fire succeed
The town, the pasture and the weed.
Water and fire deride
The sacrifice that we denied.
Water and fire shall rot
The marred foundations we forgot,
Of sanctuary and choir.
This is the death of water and fire.

Iraq War Grief Daily Witness (photo) Day 7

Image caption: Munthir Sabir, who lost 6 family members in explosion.

Support the Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict (CIVIC)
one way to support the fallen
one way to support the Iraqi people
many other ways to support the troops and the Iraqi people
one way to support victims of torture
one way to support the troops
one way to witness every day

image and words below the fold

source
(multiple images – graphic)

The Diameter of the Bomb
by Yehuda Amichai

The diameter of the bomb was thirty centimeters
and the diameter of its effective range about seven meters,
with four dead and eleven wounded.
And around these, in a larger circle
of pain and time, two hospitals are scattered
and one graveyard. But the young woman
who was buried in the city she came from,
at a distance of more than a hundred kilometers,
enlarges the circle considerably,
and the solitary man mourning her death
at the distant shores of a country far across the sea
includes the entire world in the circle.
And I won’t even mention the crying of orphans
that reaches up to the throne of God and
beyond, making
a circle with no end and no God.

Iraq War Grief Daily Witness (photo) Day 6

I offer today’s witness in honor of mothers.

one way to support the fallen
one way to support the Iraqi people
Support the Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict (CIVIC)
many other ways to support the troops and the Iraqi people
one way to support victims of torture
one way to support the troops
one way to witness every day

image and words below the fold

from The Mother
by Padraic H. Pearse

I do not grudge them: Lord, I do not grudge
My two strong sons that I have seen go out
To break their strength and die…
I will speak their names to my own heart
In the long nights;
The little names that were familiar once
Round my dead hearth.
Lord, thou art hard on mothers:
We suffer in their coming and their going;
And tho’ I grudge them not, I weary, weary
Of the long sorrow…

Iraq War Grief Daily Witness (photo) Day 5

image: Excavating a mass grave in Iraq.

image and words below the fold

Epitaph for the Race of Man: X
by Edna St. Vincent Millay

The broken dike, the levee washed away,
The good fields flooded and the cattle drowned,
Estranged and treacherous all the faithful ground,
And nothing left but floating disarray
Of tree and home uprooted, — was this the day
Man dropped upon his shadow without a sound
And died, having laboured well and having found
His burden heavier than a quilt of clay?
No, no. I saw him when the sun had set
In water, leaning on his single oar
Above his garden faintly glimmering yet…
There bulked the plough, here washed the updrifted weeds…
And scull across his roof and make for shore,
With twisted face and pocket full of seeds.

Iraq War Grief Daily Witness (photo) Day 4

caption: Rose Gentle wears a necklace with a picture of her son Gordon as she
addresses the media at 10 Downing Street…after handing in a
petition demanding a public inquiry into the legality of the war in
Iraq, May 3, 2005. Rose’s son Gordon…was killed in Basra last June.
REUTERS/Russell Boyce

one way to support the fallen
Support the Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict (CIVIC)
one way to support the Iraqi people
many other ways to support the troops and the Iraqi people
one way to support victims of torture
one way to support the troops
one way to witness every day

image and words below the fold

By Heart
by John Thomas

The years pass like summer’s southern rain,
And time tends to gray the pain,
Bury the senses and blur the consequences?
Of leaving you.

The pictures hold no memories,
No tragedies ensue.
No longer can I taste the pleasure,
The treasure of loving you.

Until I caught you in the air,
A current so pure to assure my love.
Savor my hesitation,
Raze my concentration,
And (for a moment) still my heart.
Long enough to touch, taste, feel you again,
And tear my soul apart.

For I can lose sight of the sound of your pleas,
And escape the ease of your eyes.
But I’ll never forget the soft scent of your skin,
And the way that it touched mine.

Iraq War Grief Daily Witness (photo) Day 3

description: An Australian citizen kidnapped by Iraqi militants has pleaded for US-led coalition forces to leave Iraq to save his life. This footage is of that plea. The tape shows a man identifying himself as Douglas Wood, 63.
link to full video
link to story

image and words below the fold

from Black Rook in Rainy Weather
by Sylvia Plath

…At any rate, I now walk
Wary (for it could happen
Even in this dull, ruinous landscape); skeptical,
Yet politic; ignorant

Of whatever angel may choose to flare
Suddenly at my elbow. I only know that a rook
Ordering its black feathers can so shine
As to seize my senses, haul
My eyelids up, and grant

A brief respite from fear
Of total neutrality. With luck,
Trekking stubborn through this season
Of fatigue, I shall
Patch together a content

Of sorts. Miracles occur,
If you care to call those spasmodic
Tricks of radiance miracles. The wait’s begun again,
The long wait for the angel.
For that rare, random descent.

Iraq War Grief Daily Witness (photo) Day 2

image caption: LeeAnn Warren (L) comforts her friend Ashleigh Pfister, as they look at the medals her husband, Army Spc. Jacob Pfister, was awarded during funeral services outside St. Vincent de Paul Church in North Evans, New York, on April 29, 2005…Pfister died April 19 when a suicide car bomber hit their squadron near Baghdad <snip> REUTERS/Gary Wiepert

image and words below the fold

On Being Asked to Write a Poem Against the War in Vietnam
by Hayden Carruth

Well I have and in fact
more than one and I’ll
tell you this too

I wrote one against
Algeria that nightmare
and another against

Korea and another
against the one
I was in

and I don’t remember
how many against
the three

when I was a boy
Abyssinia Spain and
Harlan County

and not one
breath was restored
to one

shattered throat
mans womans or childs
not one not

one
but death went on and on
never looking aside

except now and then
with a furtive half-smile
to make sure I was noticing.

Iraq War Grief Daily Witness (photo) Day 1

image caption: A father kisses his dead daughter as he closes her eyes at a hospital in Falluja, east of Baghdad, April 30, 2005. A rocket exploded in Falluja killing the girl and injuring ten other people according to local witnesses and doctors. REUTERS/Mohanned Faisal

image and words below the fold

Death
by Thomas Hood

It is not death, that sometime in a sigh
This eloquent breath shall take its speechless flight;
That sometime these bright stars, that now reply
In sunlight to the sun, shall set in night;
That this warm conscious flesh shall perish quite,
And all life’s ruddy springs forget to flow;
That thoughts shall cease, and the immortal sprite
Be lapp’d in alien clay and laid below;
It is not death to know this — but to know
That pious thoughts, which visit at new graves
In tender pilgrimage, will cease to go
So duly and so oft — and when grass waves
Over the pass’d-away, there may be then
No resurrection in the minds of men.