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
Hospital workers clean up pools of blood after receiving victims of a roadside bombing in the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk September 22, 2005. Police said that two people were killed and three more wounded when a roadside bomb exploded on Wednesday night in central Kirkuk.
REUTERS/Slahaldeen Rasheed
Every Infant’s Blood
by Graham Duncan
Every tree is an ancestor tree,
not just grandfather redwoods.
Every sapling, every sprout,
carries that majesty,
the dissolution of stone and bone,
of mold and leaf and tongue,
flowing as freely as blood
in earth’s leisurely body,
the oldest and slowest rhythms
crooning in its ways.
But who can sing with maple and beech
in the cold wind’s demanding meters?
The crimson and gold of their dying fall
choke the singing of our blood.
We cling to the tree of our moment,
weep for its unleaving; our mothers
and brothers, so recently fallen,
neither flow in the roots
nor creep upward under the bark
nor come to rest in orderly rings.
We know where our flesh is buried,
know the place and mark it,
but also know the repetend,*
know the flesh will bend
to the root, creep in the trunk,
sing in the leaf,
fall and repeat itself,
old as every wizened oak,
old as the sap and sea salt
in every infant’s blood.
– – –
*repetend: A word, sound, or phrase that is repeated; a refrain.
– – –
support the Iraqi people
support the Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict (CIVIC)
support CARE
support the victims of torture
remember the fallen
support the fallen
support the troops
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
so they can branch out and provide peace and comfort for all our children so they can bring justice and healing … and end to all these attrocities.
My last RubDMC morning till I return. (((RubDMC))) thank you for letting me witness with you. You’ll be flying and marching with me.
The photo today, before I even saw the poem below it, made me think of babies and how precious they are, how much hope they represent in a mad, scary world.
I’ve had a diary stuck in my head from yesterday — someone asking the question, “Is it sane/moral to bring a child into this world?”
I was 6 months pregnant when 9/11 happened, and asked myself that question a lot. Until my son was born, and I saw him as this unique combination of his father and me, as my dead mother’s only grandchild, as a new soul in a tired, pained world.
It is quite counter-intuitive to think that the world’s ills and tragedies are all the justification one needs to have a baby. This would never stand up in a court of law. But I know, for myself, the day I decide this world is no place for babies is the day I will put a bullet in my brain.
Your series is so thought-provoking — thank you, again, for your persistent witness and the lovely, lovely poems.
.
BASRA (AFP) Sept. 22 — Local authorities in Iraq’s southern city of Basra have said they will refuse to engage with British troops following a British raid on a police station this week.
“All regular meetings between the governorate and British troops have been cancelled and we will not allow British soldiers into the governorate building or any other public office in Basra,” according to Nadim al-Jaabari, spokesman for the provincial governor.
The head of the 41-member provincial council, Mohammed Saadun al-Abidi, confirmed the decision to refuse all contacts with British forces which are responsible for security in the region.
“Yesterday, the provincial council voted in session to boycott British troops and we are demanding that they return the two British soldiers to Iraqi custody,” Abidi said.
A British soldier and an Iraqi policeman in the southern Iraqi city of Basra. Local authorities in Basra have said they will refuse to engage with British troops following a British raid on a police station this week. AFP/Essam Al-Sudani“We are aware of reports of a boycott, but we are waiting until we can establish that is the case and come up with a plan,” British army spokesman Major Steve Melbourne told AFP.
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