Iraq War Grief Daily Witness Day 46

At al-Dora : US soldier SSG David Brown from Gator Company 2-12 Infantry Battalion grimaces as medics provide him first aid, after he was shot in the leg by unknown gunmen, while attempting to secure the area around the site of a weapons cache found while on patrol in the predominantly Sunni al-Dora neighborhood of southern Baghdad.
(AFP/David Furst)

Altars of Light

by Pierre Joris

If the light is the soul

then soul is what's

all around me.

It is you,

it is around you too,

it is you.

The darkness is inside me,

the opaqueness of organs folded

upon organs--

to make light in the house of

the body--

thus to bring the

outside in,

the impossible job.

And the only place to become

the skin

the border, the inbetween, where

dark meets light, where I meets

you.

In the house of world the

many darknesses are surrounded

by light.

To see the one, we need

the other / it cuts both ways

light on light is blind

dark on dark is blind

light through dark is not

dark through light is movement

dark through light becomes,

is becoming,

to move through

light is becoming,

is all

we can know.