Request + In a Country

[pyreneeees.livejournal.com]

Request: As I'm sure you're aware from being alive in the world this week, the 10th anniversary of 9/11 is this weekend. I'd love to read some good, solid, interesting poems about 9/11, patriotism, America, country, terrorism, etc. if you know of them. I appreciate it!

This poem isn't about 9/11, but it is awesome.

In a Country

by Larry Levis

My love and I are inventing a country, which we 

can already see taking shape, as if wheels were 

passing through yellow mud. But there is a prob-

lem: if we put a river in the country, it will thaw 

and begin flooding. If we put the river on the bor-

der, there will be trouble. If we forget about the 

river, there will be no way out. There is already a 

sky over that country, waiting for clouds or smoke. 

Birds have flown into it, too. Each evening more 

trees fill with their eyes, and what they see we can 

never erase.

One day it was snowing heavily, and again we were 

lying in bed, watching our country: we could 

make out the wide river for the first time, blue and 

moving. We seemed to be getting closer; we saw 

our wheel tracks leading into it and curving out 

of sight behind us. It looked like the land we had 

left, some smoke in the distance, but I wasn't sure. 

There were birds calling. The creaking of our 

wheels. And as we entered that country, it felt as if 

someone was touching our bare shoulders, lightly, 

for the last time.

Comments

[lookfar.livejournal.com]

That's beautiful.

[ashonlj.livejournal.com]

That's really lovely. Thank you for sharing.

[wicked-sassy.livejournal.com]

This isn't exactly what you requested, but it feels relevant to me.

Memorial Day for the War Dead
by Yehuda Amichai

Memorial day for the war dead. Add now
the grief of all your losses to their grief,
even of a woman that has left you. Mix
sorrow with sorrow, like time-saving history,
which stacks holiday and sacrifice and mourning
on one day for easy, convenient memory.

Oh, sweet world soaked, like bread,
in sweet milk for the terrible toothless God.
"Behind all this some great happiness is hiding."
No use to weep inside and to scream outside.
Behind all this perhaps some great happiness is hiding.

Memorial day. Bitter salt is dressed up
as a little girl with flowers.
The streets are cordoned off with ropes,
for the marching together of the living and the dead.
Children with a grief not their own march slowly,
like stepping over broken glass.

The flautist's mouth will stay like that for many days.
A dead soldier swims above little heads
with the swimming movements of the dead,
with the ancient error the dead have
about the place of the living water.

A flag loses contact with reality and flies off.
A shopwindow is decorated with
dresses of beautiful women, in blue and white.
And everything in three languages:
Hebrew, Arabic, and Death.

A great and royal animal is dying
all through the night under the jasmine
tree with a constant stare at the world.

A man whose son died in the war walks in the street
like a woman with a dead embryo in her womb.
"Behind all this some great happiness is hiding."

[duathir.livejournal.com]

I do not know this soldier poet's name, but he served in the Gulf War.

Protest
(Written after the Anti-War demonstration against Iraq, 2003.)

When you wave your banners,
You protest and rant,
Your indignation worn like a medal,
Remember those who you condemn.
We are not mere automata,
We are not blind to injustice,
We made a decision, to try to serve,
Through whatever our reasons.
We did not ask for this.
We joined through pride, through loyalty,
Or boredom, and need for adventure,
But whatever our reasons, we all joined to do some good.
We don't blindly obey, and act without thought.
But neither are we perfect.
When you wave your banner screaming "Not in My Name",
Try to remember this.
We willingly offer to lay down our lives,
So you can keep the right to condemn us,
We offer to die so you are free to condemn us,
And we do so in your name.
We are all someone's son, someone's daughter,
Lover, Husband, Wife, Father, Mother,
We are all human beings too.
When you condemn the events that our country creates,
Remember that we didn't choose them.
We willingly give our lives to our country,
And we give them to defend it all,
The good, the bad, the immoral or righteous,
We cannot be selective in where we act.
So when you march and you chant,
In anger and frustration,
Remember those who are doing what you hate so much.
Remember that they decided to do something right,
But protest against those who used this for wrong.
Our soldiers are ordinary men and women,
Who all have lives, love and dreams,
They stand for the freedom you use to attack them,
So please try not to condemn,

We soldiers are human too.

by DL



Desert Skies Under Blackout

We squat here in the dark,
A menace to life, to all that we oppose.
A mighty force of destruction,
We wait in silence for the time to fight,
Confident in our strength, in our power to un-create,
We wait, hiding our lights,
Better that the enemy can see nothing,
Better, to ease his impending destruction.
We wait, and night falls.

Then, we look up.

Our mighty army is rendered nothing,
Insignificant beneath the sky.
The desert sky, under blackout,
It is a pure glory, an infinite universe of stars,
Forced down onto our eyes,
We look into the beautiful endless expanse,
Stretching on into time before us,
Light older than humanity falls upon us,
And the pathetic force that we can offer.
All that we are is nothing before this,
The mighty army of our country,
Defeated by the sky.

We gaze, off into infinity,
Unblinking into the night's beauty,
Billions of stars, galaxies, planets, life immortal,
Never ending.
We are waiting to unleash horror,
In a place where all faith was born.
Beneath this sky, all faith is conceived,
Developed and dies, beneath the crushing splendour,
The impossible beauty,
The desert sky, under blackout.

by DL