this diary is dedicated to all who suffer because of war and other disasters
cross-posted at DailyKos, Booman Tribune, European Tribune, and My Left Wing.
image and poem below the fold
Iraqi women watch US soldiers patrol a highway in Tikrit. Tension was running high in southern Iraq after British troops freed two undercover soldiers taken hostage by Shiite militiamen following a shooting and mob riots in Basra.
(AFP/Tauseef Mustafa)
Wanting to Die
by Anne Sexton
Since you ask, most days I cannot remember.
I walk in my clothing, unmarked by that voyage.
Then the almost unnameable lust returns.
Even then I have nothing against life.
I know well the grass blades you mention,
the furniture you have placed under the sun.
But suicides have a special language.
Like carpenters they want to know which tools.
They never ask why build.
Twice I have so simply declared myself,
have possessed the enemy, eaten the enemy,
have taken on his craft, his magic.
In this way, heavy and thoughtful,
warmer than oil or water,
I have rested, drooling at the mouth-hole.
I did not think of my body at needle point.
Even the cornea and the leftover urine were gone.
Suicides have already betrayed the body.
Still-born, they don’t always die,
but dazzled, they can’t forget a drug so sweet
that even children would look on and smile.
To thrust all that life under your tongue!–
that, all by itself, becomes a passion.
Death’s a sad Bone; bruised, you’d say,
and yet she waits for me, year after year,
to so delicately undo an old wound,
to empty my breath from its bad prison.
Balanced there, suicides sometimes meet,
raging at the fruit, a pumped-up moon,
leaving the bread they mistook for a kiss,
leaving the page of the book carelessly open,
something unsaid, the phone off the hook
and the love, whatever it was, an infection.
– – –
support SassyTexan’s humanitarian work by donating to the Houston Red Cross and being sure to indicate that it is in honor of MLW SassyTexan
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support the troops and the Iraqi people
read This is what John Kerry did today, the diary by lawnorder that prompted this series
read Riverbend’s Bagdhad Burning
read Dahr Jamail’s Iraq Dispatches
read Today in Iraq
Leonard Clark’s blog has been taken down
witness every day
I’m not sure if it’s hate or mistrust… but it sure isn’t love, respect or gratitude.
Thank you Rub!
Janet, I was wondering the same damn thing. Sortta looks like she is very mistrusting and angry and scared all at the same time. HOw well I know the feeling…Wished I could talk to that woman…dont you?
and I would tell her that I am so sorry. So very sorry.
My country has turned into a land of savages who don’t care for anyone else but their own damn self. We don’t even care about Americans in the Souther region.
Unless Americans are personally impacted and affected, they do not care.
Americans have an attention span of one week, then it’s off to Monday NIght Football. No time to think. No time to care. We’re so busy now, running off to no where.
That is, some Americans… there are many more, many more who do care and every day they have to deal with the sickness and the bile that is called the Bush Administration and the so called “free press”.
We are trying to make our government accountable for the war attrocities and for the domestic “errorism”. We are don’t want to witness this anymore.
That’s the beauty of poetry and image – what you see, and how you react, is entirely yours.
For me this poem and the image speak for the soldier’s side, and not so much the woman’s.
I guess you could say that the poem struck me as the thoughts of a soldier in such an unwinnable position – to have been asked to do a job, yet to be mistrusted, or even hated, by the people that he thought he had come to help.
She’s at home – yes, it’s been invaded but it’s still hers, while he’s in a strange place far from everything he knew.
Anyway, like I said, that’s the beauty of poetry and images – we each take from it what we need.
PS – Travel safely to DC, and if you pass the White House give FratBoy a good stiff middle finger for me, willya? ;^)
Thanks RubDMC..yet another good one…
work such unique magic. I just finished emailing my Aunt about the march in D.C. September 24th is not a good day for us in this family so we are using the march and my presence there as a distraction this year that we all much need. The 24th was to have been my Aunt and Uncle’s 39th anniversary, but there was also Vietnam and he was a hero child who felt his past and his secrets defiled who he was. He ended that internal dispute using the most severe critique a person can give themselves. I will carry this poem with me in D.C. where it so obviously belongs with the rest of us.
Bless you and your family, MT. I remember your diaries about your uncle very well. For him to have lived with such pain…
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In response to diary by londonbear ::
In publication of my breaking news diary
Stand-off Basra :: Iraqi vs UK Forces – Riots After UK Soldiers Arrested
◊ by Oui ● Mon Sep 19th, 2005 at 06:56:10 AM PST
I believe my diary was one of earliest to recognize the importance of this news item.
I found the Reuters photos with caption not to publish these. I refrained from publication at blown up size, until hours later it became clear the request was for political, selfish purpose. Another reason, these photos originated in the Arab media and were published all over the Internet and media. So this was not a freak photo, but one of many in all forms and in multiple shots. It became clear there was also TV footage available.
As the story developed into a world-wide top news item, my decision not to publish served no purpose and the story became more important than a request by MoD to prevent publication. I listen to BBC World continuously, and the false information and propaganda motivation by the MoD spokesman needed to be confronted with transparency of what was happening in real time.
Therefore my decision to show what was available elsewhere on the Internet.
Thus londonbear, no hypocrisy by the blogging community in these cases, but a healthy dose of skepticism and a primary goal to offer all available information for transparency. I have more questions over the UK mission and MoD press statements, than I have received in factual answers from them.
As far as your other statements about the UK media, the video of burning armored carrier and UK soldiers in flames, has been carried all over the press and TV networks.
Let’s not forget :: the horror of Iraq invasion and terror of Abu Ghraib!
Torture at Abu Ghraib by Seymour M. Hersh
It’s accountability that matters to seek political change in government.
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