CIVILIZED WAR

We stopped the bombing in Kosovo for Ramadan
but we didn't lift the sanctions that kill
thousands in Iraq by crueler means than bombs.
Children die of pneumonia. Weeks of slow death.
Liquid suffocation that cheap, generic
antibiotics would eradicate in moments.
All because oil is refined by greed
and politicians think in terms
of necessary casualties
which does not translate
into big bellied three year olds
with mucous-crusted eyes gone milky
in the cataract of early dying —
not for the bureaucrats who run wars
and governments —
not for the uniformed kids gripping
joy sticks on control panels,
viewing targets on infrared screens,
doing their best to win the game,
to run their score higher and higher.

Today Kabul, yesterday Kosovo,
tomorrow Sarajevo, again.
The day after that, all of Iraq —
except during Ramadan, or Christmas, or Hanukah,
when we halt the game
for high holy days
to make war civil.

HEAR ME!

If it is conceivable that soon
there may be nothing left of me
but the shadow of my ashes
on dead ground…
then let me speak.

Hear Me!

I did not want this war
nor any other.
I did not desire
blood, hot with fear,
poured into the thirst
of ambitious men.

Hear Me!

I am not part of this arrogance,
nor is my child.
I am only a mirror
of another mother,
perhaps cloaked in a chador,
clutching her children
with arms like the wings
of a great, dark hen,
while intelligent bombs
mindlessly destroy the walls around her.

POVERTY

While winter's darkened days
shorten perspective
to the dwarf silhouettes
cut by trees,
we sit warm inside our houses;
bellies full of meat,
refrigerators humming,
televisions driveling.

Around us, the world makes war on itself.

Palestinian land is stolen.
Families evicted onto streets retaliate,
martyr themselves to murder Israelis.
Iraqi children die in want of food and medicine.
NATO drops destruction on the heads
of foe, innocent, and ally
accommodating America
who, once wounded,
grows malevolent.

All this
while we worry
petty grievances
in a poverty of the soul

THE LONG FUSE

I was born after the Prussian, Wilhelm, betrayed his ally. Shame-hardened
before Russia bled into her soil, a Long Fuse unwound, flamed, hardened.

My life began before the traitor died, when evening draws nigh — Berlin's
clairvoyance. My childhood was filled with servants half-maimed, hardened.

Now, radios confiscated, the university closed — war's thunder whelps
over cadmium night horizons singing to us. My girls grow strange, hardened.

I pray Freud has found refuge for his brilliance. Pray wisdom survives.
All my life has been a farce. I merely played untamed, hardened.

Spielrein is such a foolish name, a once private zeitgeist.
I enslaved myself to this symbology, its alchemy arcane, hardened.

NOVA

Renate's birth was a rebirth. I nearly bled her away fretting over past love.
Freud prayed for a girl. He said bearing Siegfried might destroy my new love.

To my second daughter, I gave a private name. I called her Dette.
Weak as her dying father, she was the price paid, but not the least loved.

As the children grew, their father shrank till there was nothing left but coffin meal.
I taught in Rostov till the Stalinists banished me. My work? One more lost love.

Pockets shriveled, clothes sooted, I mourned my losses. We survived
the cold mercies of my family. I learned to use caution rather than trust love.

Five years we begged for food, wearing thin as winter shade. When Nazis herded
Jews to the synagogue, shot us, set the fire; I lost my daughters, my best love.

No child bore my name. Sabina would have set those slippered feet in chains.
Fifty-six years I fought to be my own nova. Death cannot kill the truest love.