Poems for Friday: There's a War in My Country

Troops of the last combat brigade remaining in Iraq prepare to leave for Kuwait. Photo via Associated Press

As my workday winds down, two buskers are belting out "Ain't gonna study war no more" by the giant iron outside my office. Just shortly before, I discovered this masterful poem by Yael Shinar about violence past, present and future. The sky is beautiful outside and the air is slightly muggy. There are no bullets within earshot.

In the Levant, human violence appears late 


in prehistory.

A slit in the sternum, a knick in the skull—


the worn, warm skeleton,

unearthed & stained 


with millenia's diverse

mineral sediment. 


Indentation like a crater,

gentle slit like glacial rift— 


now we make holes, to look like wells

to ten-thousand-years-from-now sextons, 


and violence, to them,

may not be lamentable,


it may be itself lament.

___

My prophet distances himself from me 


and gives me children who leave no trace.

I am bereft 


of spring.

My prophet nears me 


through children's blood,

sticky and sweet, it


evaporates

in summer heat.

___


Time 


washes everything & nothing & truth

languishes. This 


is not work for the mind.

Internal organs speak 


an imperative to live.

I lie down with that imperative, at night, 


in my bed,

I will the bullets


Slow—

breach my heart


later.