Poetic Reflections
on War and the War in Iraq
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Some of the best images of the
realities of war and violence in general I have found are in the wonderful book
of “Iraq Poems” penned
by David Smith-Ferri
Note: proceeds from the sale of this book go to Direct Aid
Iraq, providing medical help to Iraqi refugees.
Violence spreads
its patterned cloth over our land and sets its table.
We eat and are
eaten daily.” (May 2006, p. 35)
Most of us have
little or no experience of such pervasive violence.
We may glimpse it
for a moment on TV,
but then it’s gone.
But for the
victims of war and other violence, there truly may be “no sanctuary.”
We are invited to
provide a sanctuary in our hearts for such people, but it’s painful and we
resist.
From Battlefield Without Borders
“I A Tornado.
From a window in
your home, you watch it step out of the sky, as if it were the sky itself,
and touch down and
make its drunken and deafening way into your neighborhood. It swallows a
school, your friend’s house, a hospital.
Wind from its
whirring blades lifts the roof above your head and carries it away.
“II Lightning,
striking fire in woods.
At the base of
your family tree, grass ignites and hot orange tongues lick its trunk, climbing
toward its canopy.
You hear your
cousin scream as leaves on one side of the tree catch fire. A flaming branch
cracks and falls.
“III A Volcano.
Out of its fiery
belly, it spews dead bodies high into air, mothers and fathers, children and
babies.
Bodies pile on top
of each other.
You can still see
the top of the pile of American soldiers,
even as it approaches
three thousand feet above sea level,
but in Iraq, the pile
has entered the stratosphere.
No one has
measured it, and no one knows how high it will climb.”
(From “The Iraq War Described to a Child”)
“There is no need for words.
There is a
bottomless need for words.
“No need for a
pack of canine words to drag that flaming body in pieces into our yards,
a stench of molten
flesh into our kitchens, its pyroclastic screams into our bedrooms.
No need for
someone to tell us what to feel, as though our human bodies had forgotten how
to register horror,
as though the
seismograph stylus had to be operated manually and from a remote location.
“A bottomless need
for words:
words like tools
clearing underbrush,
uncovering a footprint of
culture,
of gender, of race
and nationality.
Words like hands
tunneling into earth,
fingers scratching at
soil and rocks seeking hidden roots of hatred,
roots of violence,
roots of privilege, and yes, somewhere,
if nonviolent life,
unearthing histories, personal and communal.
“But first, a space.
A space where
multiple waves of feelings can vibrate through us,
a massive initial
shock and its inevitable aftershocks.
A space where
silence can have its say.”
(July 2006, p. 132) From “Where Silence Can Have Its Say”