{"id":1298,"date":"2016-06-22T16:43:59","date_gmt":"2016-06-22T21:43:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/rasmusen.org\/special\/ameliajane\/?p=1298"},"modified":"2016-06-27T14:30:37","modified_gmt":"2016-06-27T19:30:37","slug":"in-a-sky-full-of-hunger","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rasmusen.org\/special\/ameliajane\/archives\/1298","title":{"rendered":"In a Sky Full of Hunger"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Though it exposes the evil in man&#8217;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 &#8216;s left picking at the indelible blood crusted in their fingernails, we the guilty have the opportunity to heal one another&#8217;s wounds. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. . . .<\/p>\n<p>Who&#8217;s to measure the value of a human life against the strength of a cause?<\/p>\n<p><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.tektonart.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/FallOfSpring2.jpg?w=640\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Fragments of last year blew in on the wind,<br \/>\nin through the window,<br \/>\nwhirling like samaras,<br \/>\ntwisting like slender poppies tossing up<br \/>\nand bowing down to the falling drum of raindrops<br \/>\nAll fizzling to vapor<br \/>\nas echoes of dynamite crashed over our city.<\/p>\n<p>They built up a fireplace<br \/>\nin the middle of the desert.<br \/>\nThey roared like a lion.<br \/>\n(The children were crying.)<br \/>\nAnd they roared like one lion,<br \/>\nin a sky full of hunger,<\/p>\n<p>and burned the menagerie.<\/p>\n<p>Raindrops fell to their deaths,<br \/>\ncrashed and burned,<br \/>\ntheir only audience a traveler<br \/>\nholding out his raincoat to catch them softly.<br \/>\nHis socks gray with a flood of the dead,<br \/>\nhe stretches his coat into creases over the smokey glow,<br \/>\nas raindrops explode on his forehead, the backs of his hands.<\/p>\n<p>Jetsam from last year washes our shores.<br \/>\nOur pockets bulge with foreign wood,<br \/>\nlittle grinning idols,<br \/>\ncuriosities,<br \/>\nas we toss green bottles<br \/>\nback into the tide<br \/>\nfor sea slugs to augur divine hints of light.<br \/>\nWe pretended the bottles were not for our city,<br \/>\nwere not from our city,<br \/>\nwere bottles and nothing more.<br \/>\nBut wrinkled little rolls of paper,<br \/>\nsmudged and soiled with tears<br \/>\nWait unread.<\/p>\n<p>Will be read.<\/p>\n<p>For now, drift off to sea.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Though it exposes the evil in man&#8217;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&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1298","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-writings"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4WcVY-kW","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rasmusen.org\/special\/ameliajane\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1298","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rasmusen.org\/special\/ameliajane\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rasmusen.org\/special\/ameliajane\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rasmusen.org\/special\/ameliajane\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rasmusen.org\/special\/ameliajane\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1298"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/rasmusen.org\/special\/ameliajane\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1298\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1352,"href":"https:\/\/rasmusen.org\/special\/ameliajane\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1298\/revisions\/1352"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rasmusen.org\/special\/ameliajane\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1298"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rasmusen.org\/special\/ameliajane\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1298"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rasmusen.org\/special\/ameliajane\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1298"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}