Reporter: Mr. Harrison, with all that’s going on in the world today, why did you decide to focus on this (Bangladesh)?”

George Harrison: “Because a friend asked me to help.”

from a press conference for the Concert for Bangladesh

this diary is dedicated to all who suffer because of war and other disasters

we honor courage in all its forms

cross-posted at DailyKos, Booman Tribune, European Tribune,  My Left Wing, and TexasKos.

image and poem below the fold

Mourners place victims in wooden coffins at the morgue of Yarmouk hospital after gunmen stopped a minibus and killed all eight Iraqis who were inside in Baghdad, Iraq, Thursday, May 18, 2006. The victims of the Baghdad minibus attack were seven car mechanics heading to work and their driver, all of whom were ordered out of the vehicle in a remote area of southwestern Baghdad and shot one after another, according to police. (AP Photo/Karim Kadim)

Hornworm: Autumn Lamentation
by Stanley Kunitz

Since that first morning when I crawled
into the world, a naked grubby thing,
and found the world unkind,
my dearest faith has been that this
is but a trial: I shall be changed.
In my imaginings I have already spent
my brooding winter underground,
unfolded silky powdered wings, and climbed
into the air, free as a puff of cloud
to sail over the steaming fields,
alighting anywhere I pleased,
thrusting into deep tubular flowers.

It is not so: there may be nectar
in those cups, but not for me.
All day, all night, I carry on my back
embedded in my flesh, two rows
of little white cocoons,
so neatly stacked
they look like eggs in a crate.
And I am eaten half away.

If I can gather strength enough
I’ll try to burrow under a stone
and spin myself a purse
in which to sleep away the cold;
though when the sun kisses the earth
again, I know I won’t be there.
Instead, out of my chrysalis
will break, like robbers from a tomb,
a swarm of parasitic flies,
leaving my wasted husk behind.

Sir, you with the red snippers
in your hand, hovering over me,
casting your shadow, I greet you,
whether you come as an angel of death
or of mercy. But tell me,
before you choose to slice me in two:
Who can understand the ways
of the Great Worm in the Sky?

– – –
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