Bomb attack victims lie in a hospital in a hospital in Hilla, about 100 km (60 miles) south of Baghdad, March 7, 2007. Insurgents killed 149 Shi'ite pilgrims heading for the holy Iraqi city of Kerbala on Tuesday, including 115 when two suicide bombers blew themselves up in one of the deadliest attacks of the 4-year-war.
REUTERS/Ali Jasim (IRAQ)
After the Diagnosis
by Christian Wiman
No remembering now
When the apple sapling was blown
Almost to the ground.
No telling how,
With all the other trees around,
It alone was struck.
It must have been luck,
He thought for years, so close
To the house it grew.
It must have been night.
Change is a thing one sleeps through
When young, and he was young.
If there was a weakness in the earth,
A give he went down on his knees
To find and feel the limits of,
There is no longer.
If there was one random blow from above
The way he's come to know
From years in this place,
The roots were stronger.
Whatever the case,
He has watched this tree survive
Wind ripping at his roof for nights
On end, heats and blights
That left little else alive.
No remembering now...
A day's changes mean all to him
And all days come down
To one clear pane
Through which he sees
Among all other trees
This leaning, clenched, unyielding one
That seems cast
In the form of a blast
That would have killed it,
As if something at the heart of things,
And with the heart of things,
Had willed it.
from The New Yorker magazine, March 12, 2007 (p.74)
6 comments:
for peace
I witness.
For peace
I witness
For peace.
Witness.
Crowds of pilgrims held their hands in the air and bowed their foreheads to the ground, chanting prayers outside Karbala’s Imam Hussein shrine, 50 miles south of Baghdad. Iraqi television channels streamed live video of noontime prayers at the shrine.
Millions of pilgrims have traveled to Karbala over the past week, and more than 340 people died in violence since Monday - most of them Shiite pilgrims killed in sectarian attacks along the way.
Security was tightened around Karbala on Friday after authorities received an anonymous tip about possible suicide bombers sneaking into the city, said Abdul al-Aal al-Yassiri, head of Karbala’s provincial council.
Four million pilgrims were attending rites Friday, he said.
witness
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