Though it exposes the evil in man’s heart perhaps more any other mass human endeavor, war also manages to bring out the most heroic deeds men do. Full of injustice and justice, of wonder and horror, it returns inevitably, every few years, generating debates, rallies, and protests among students, housewives, and intelligensia alike. Yet no matter how we examine it, a decision on the moral rightness of war always seems to elude our grasp. War corrupts and purifies simultaneously on every human scale; it stains the hands of nations, then, when the war is over, and everyone ‘s left picking at the indelible blood crusted in their fingernails, we the guilty have the opportunity to heal one another’s wounds. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. . . .
Who’s to measure the value of a human life against the strength of a cause?
Fragments of last year blew in on the wind,
in through the window,
whirling like samaras,
twisting like slender poppies tossing up
and bowing down to the falling drum of raindrops
All fizzling to vapor
as echoes of dynamite crashed over our city.
They built up a fireplace
in the middle of the desert.
They roared like a lion.
(The children were crying.)
And they roared like one lion,
in a sky full of hunger,
and burned the menagerie.
Raindrops fell to their deaths,
crashed and burned,
their only audience a traveler
holding out his raincoat to catch them softly.
His socks gray with a flood of the dead,
he stretches his coat into creases over the smokey glow,
as raindrops explode on his forehead, the backs of his hands.
Jetsam from last year washes our shores.
Our pockets bulge with foreign wood,
little grinning idols,
curiosities,
as we toss green bottles
back into the tide
for sea slugs to augur divine hints of light.
We pretended the bottles were not for our city,
were not from our city,
were bottles and nothing more.
But wrinkled little rolls of paper,
smudged and soiled with tears
Wait unread.
Will be read.
For now, drift off to sea.