Friday, February 2, 2007

Iraq War Grief Daily Witness Day 15

A man who was wounded during Thursday night's suicide bomb attack, lies in a hospital in Hilla, about 100 km (60 miles) south of Baghdad, February 2, 2007. Two suicide bombers killed 45 people and wounded 150 when they blew themselves up at a crowded market in the Iraqi town of Hilla on Thursday, police said.
REUTERS/Mushtaq Muhammad (IRAQ)


Bone Song
by Tom Lavazzi


It doesn’t turn anymore
the worn stone
the seasons halted at winter


I remember
when two bones, rubbed together
made people laugh
and weep at times


now, many rest
like broken marionettes
in shallow pits
It will always be cold


The new bread
common and tasteless
is no longer made here
warm like a cat


And vacant carriages
with wheels deaf as faces
never leave the pale houses


Yet I stay a moment longer
at the table
looking at the waxed and wired skull
wondering how to answer it


The eyes, no eyes
already have begun
to reclaim

5 comments:

ask said...

I witness.

olivia said...

peace

moira said...

for a wounded man...

Peace.

musing graze said...

Witness.

You, Andrew Marvell
by Archibald MacLeish

And here face down beneath the sun
And here upon earth’s noonward height
To feel the always coming on
The always rising of the night

To feel creep up the curving east
The earthy chill of dusk and slow
Upon those under lands the vast
And ever climbing shadow grow

And strange at Ecbatan the trees
Take leaf by leaf the evening strange
The flooding dark about their knees
The mountains over Persia change

And now at Kermanshah the gate
Dark empty and the withered grass
And through the twilight now the late
Few travelers in the westward pass

And Baghdad darken and the bridge
Across the silent river gone
And through Arabia the edge
Of evening widen and steal on

And deepen on Palmyra’s street
The wheel rut in the ruined stone
And Lebanon fade out and Crete
High through the clouds and overblown

And over Sicily the air
Still flashing with the landward gulls
And loom and slowly disappear
The sails above the shadowy hulls

And Spain go under the the shore
Of Africa the gilded sand
And evening vanish and no more
The low pale light across that land

Nor now the long light on the sea

And here face downward in the sun
To feel how swift how secretly
The shadow of the night comes on.

anniethena said...

Peace, and witness