http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/12/opinion/12KRIS.html?th
The Art of War
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
Published: June 12, 2004
Generals and presidents approach war as a vast struggle. But war, at its most achingly real, happens not to armies, but to individuals.
In my contest for Iraq war poetry, the most moving focused on individual tiles rather than the larger mosaic. Here are the grand winners (
www.nytimes.com/kristofresponds has more poems):
Alexander Nemser of New Haven wrote about the death of a pilot:
His mother sent him pictures of his truck,
A pickup, hubcaps polished every time
He stopped to fill the tank, as clear as mirrors;
The dog, who'd lost an eye last spring; his town,
Apollo, Pennsylvania, near the falls
On Roaring Run; the watch his uncle won
From playing cards; his empty chair at dinner,
Audacious as the space left by a tooth.
We traded rifles, scripted final letters
And promised their delivery home. At night,
We planned escapes to Istanbul to join
The dervishes. Eleven miles from Baghdad,
I stood, dumb as a cow, and watched two choppers
Collide like fists and spin across the sky.
Jim Brown, a former U.S. marine now in Sydney, Australia, wrote from a soldier's point of view:
It's only a short dash, from this dusty wall to that one;
But you try it:
When someone you can't see is sending hot, cracking thunderbolts your way,
And you're clutching your young wife's sweat-faded photo so tight,
Your legs don't work properly.
Or try to tell the good Iraqis from the bad ones;
Make a mistake:
The good ones become bad ones, and you make the evening news.
The answer is to get from this dusty wall to that one, and get home.
Frank Sandoval of Louisville, Colo., thought of children:
A young girl in a pretty dress;
Her first kiss, her dried lips pressed
Into the dirt of a road. . . .
She's now a horrid little carcass,
Flies, tears dried to gelatin in her eyes,
Hair dirtier than a woman's hair should ever be.
She's free.
I look now at my little girl,
Blue eyes prettier than a flower,
Laughter more joyous than a bird song.
My heart swells in my chest and while I laugh,
I feel fear, smell a faint stench of insanity.
David Keppel of Bloomington, Ind., responded to the Abu Ghraib torture:
Did I hold a dog
To your terrified nakedness
Or perch you on a box,
Your outstretched arms wired
To the current of fear? . . .
Tell me what I have done,
I beg you, as you begged me,
Tell me what I can do
To make you forget
That my people never remember.
My favorite poem, from James Yeck of Boulder, Colo., focused on those left behind:
A tiny piece of metal hangs upon a frame,
That has "father" written below the name.
The tiny piece of metal hangs in glory there,
Never left to tarnish by neglecting care.
The tiny piece of metal brings fame to the home,
Glory for its man who crossed the ocean's foam.
Politicians send praises into the peaceful air;
Others smile now who once would only stare.
People from all around come especially to see
The tiny piece of metal, a symbol of the free.
A country's grateful token to the bravest of its land. . . .
Proud of their famous town the village people say,
"Do you know what this means?" with pride most every day,
To the little boy whose father went to war.
"Yes," softly he replies, "I have no daddy any more."
* * * * * * * * * *
So poignant these poems of the latest experience of poet-soldiers that I cried and cried, dry-heavingly sobbed and sobbed, for a long while to the point of never-ending exhaustion again. I read them and remember the terrible waste and searing images of my war 36 years ago, so vastly different, so horribly the same. I barely scratch a very deep surface of what I experienced during 67-68 in the Central Highlands of Vietnam in some war poetry of my own.
Much of my writing, as I'm sure much of the writing of this new batch of poet laureates from the bottomless trenches shall be, has been a repetition compulsion to try and exorcise the demons of my war experience from my consciousness. I don't disrespect it, I am exceedingly grateful for it, it has kept me more or less sane and pretending the semblance of "normal" functioning in a mainstream mostly emerged in amnesia or Alzheimer's, who having failed to remember are doomed to repeat the tinsel call to arms by mostly old, wannabe, armchair warriors.
On the other hand, as one of my recent new blog pals, Denny, observes elsewhere on these blog-pages:
The funny thing about life is that there is so much to be outraged and disappointed about, while at the same time, so much to be awed by and thankful for. If it weren't so, I think I'd check out.
That, Denny, is absatively, posolutely gospel truth for me as well, friend, so let me end this dark entry with some always breaking Light by sharing this poem written a couple of months ago in my service as a Peace Warrior in Sri Lanka, which also barely scratches the very deep surface of this incredibly splendid moment:
minuet
the big-ship ferry
plies smoothly
across the shimmering sea
of Trinco Bay towards Mutur
as i casually day-dream
mostly oblivious to the grandeur
of the passing scene
until I am dream-stopped, fully captured
by two eagles delicately grasping
each other's pair of talons
and with a swift unison flap
of wide-stretched wings
make a centrifugal encirclement
of each other, a delicate minuet
around and around and around
not once, but twice am I graced
by their daisy-wheel spinning together
then deftly releasing each other
to fly off side by side into the misty horizon
while high overhead a great flock
of current-gliding sea terns
head for the opposite shore
like a grand corps de ballet of the gods
January 4, 2004
Trincomalee, Sri Lanka
