tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37129612024-03-13T10:03:08.979-07:00Shards: Poems of the WarA collection of poems related to the Sept. 11 attacks and the months since, edited by Eugene VolokhEugenehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01914730227414261189noreply@blogger.comBlogger7125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3712961.post-2001288212003-04-10T13:23:00.000-07:002003-04-10T13:27:34.000-07:00<blockquote><b>Images</b>, by Howard Leathers<br>
<br />
<br />The sad eyed girl in search of food.
<br />A soldier's jacket tinged in blood.
<br />
<br />The TV box, the rolled up rug.
<br />The info chief unseeing, smug.
<br />
<br />The Humvee pillow, sandy bed.
<br />The stolen chair upon the head.
<br />
<br />The muddy boots, the sandstorm's gale.
<br />The children freed from children's jail.
<br />
<br />The green tinged light of mile high jumps.
<br />The sightless eyes, the handless stumps.
<br />
<br />The palace garden picnic scene.
<br />The weary warrior, brave marine.
<br />
<br />A rescued soldier's father's glee.
<br />Iraqis jubilant and free.<blockquote>[hleathers at arec.umd.edu]</blockquote></blockquote>Eugenehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01914730227414261189noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3712961.post-900061782002-12-02T18:25:00.000-08:002002-12-02T21:49:45.000-08:00<blockquote><b>Geldings</b>, by Alan Sullivan<br>
<br />
<br /><blockquote><blockquote><i>They used to celebrate only three things:
<br />the birth of a boy, the emergence of a poet,
<br />and the foaling of a blood mare.
<br />-Ibn Rashiq</i></blockquote></blockquote>
<br />Because they loved their horses
<br />more than their swaddled wives,
<br />they sang the poets' praises
<br />of brief but impassioned lives
<br />while squatting on their hassocks
<br />and plucking polished ouds
<br />or loading shot in flintlocks
<br />to settle tribal feuds.
<br />
<br />Today their grim descendants
<br />truck-bomb embassies
<br />to prove their independence
<br />from Satanic dynasties,
<br />yet no jihad or fatwa
<br />purges polluted souks
<br />where portraits of Madonna
<br />outsell the Prophet's books.
<br />
<br />To me it scarcely matters
<br />if mullahs preach in skirts
<br />or harems trade their chadors
<br />for lycra pants and shirts.
<br />Sheiks are counting profits
<br />like geldings courting mares,
<br />but I mourn for the poets,
<br />not for the billionaires.
<br />
<br /><blockquote>[alan at seablogger.com; originally published in <i>Chronicles</i>]</blockquote></blockquote>Eugenehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01914730227414261189noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3712961.post-3854107392002-09-03T18:13:00.000-07:002002-09-03T18:13:50.260-07:00<blockquote><b>Two Poems on the Eve of Battle</b>, by Eugene Volokh<br>
<br />
<br />[1.]
<br />
<br />War is a young man’s profession,
<br />The old men correctly say.
<br />Father, hear this, my confession:
<br />I thank God I’m not young today.
<br />
<br />[2.]
<br />
<br />In my youth, the world was quiet,
<br />No-one called me off to war.
<br />Who can blame me? Should it shame me?
<br />Just got lucky, nothing more.
<br />Write a poem now, stay at home now,
<br />I am safely thirty-four.
<br />
<br /><blockquote>[volokh at law.ucla.edu]</blockquote></blockquote>
<br />Eugenehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01914730227414261189noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3712961.post-853952872002-08-29T15:32:00.000-07:002002-09-03T18:14:48.000-07:00</blockquote><center><b>110 Stories</b>, by John M. Ford</b></center><table cellpadding="4"><tr valign="top"><td nowrap="nowrap"><div style="font-size:11px"><br>This is not real. We've seen it all before.<br>Slow down, you're screaming. What exploded? When?<br>I guess this means we've got ourselves a war.<br>And look at -- Lord have mercy, not again.<br>I heard that they went after Air Force One.<br>Call FAA at once if you can't land.<br>They say the bastards got the Pentagon.<br>The Capitol. The White House. Disneyland.<br>I was across the river, saw it all.<br>Down Fifth, the buildings put it in a frame.<br>Aboard the ferry -- we felt awful small.<br>I didn't look until I felt the flame.<br>The steel turns red, the framework starts to go.<br>Jacks clasp Jills' hands and step onto the sky.<br>The noise was not like anything you know.<br>Stand still, he said, and watch a building die.<br>There's no one you can help above this floor.<br>We've got to hold our breath. We've got to climb.<br>Don't give me that; I did this once before.<br>The firemen look up, and know the time.<br>These labored, took their wages, and are dead.<br>The cracker-crumbs of fascia sieve the light.<br>The air's deciduous of letterhead.<br>How dark, how brilliant, things will be tonight.<br>Once more, we'll all remember where we were.<br>Forget it, friend. You didn't have a choice.<br>That's got to be a rumor, but who's sure?<br>The Internet is stammering with noise.<br>You turn and turn but just can't turn away.<br>My child can't understand. I can't explain.<br>The towers drain out from Boston to LA.<br>The cellphone is our ganglion of pain.<br>What was I thinking of? What did I say?<br>You're safe? The TV's off. What do you mean?<br>I'm going now, but not going away.<br>I couldn't touch the answering machine.<br>I nearly was, but caught a later bus.<br>I would have been, but had this awful cold.<br>I spoke with her, she's headed home, don't fuss.<br>Pick up those tools. The subway job's on hold.<br>Somebody's got to pay, no matter what.<br>I love you. Just I love you. Just I love --<br>The cloud rolls on; I think of Eliot.<br>Not silence, but an emptiness above.<br>There's dust, and metal. Nothing else at all.<br>it's airless and it's absolutely black.<br>I found a wallet. I'm afraid to call.<br>I'll stay until my little girl comes back.<br>You hold your breath whenever something shakes.<br>St. Vincent's takes one massive trauma case.<br>The voice, so placid, till the circuit breaks.<br>Ten minutes just to grab stuff from my place.<br>I only want to hear them say goodbye.<br>They could be down there, buried, couldn't they?<br></div></td>
<br /><td nowrap="nowrap"><div style="font-size:11px"><br>My friends all made it, and that's why I cry.<br>He stayed with me, and he died anyway.<br>We almost tipped the island toward uptown.<br>Next minute, I'm in Macy's. Who knows how.<br>I really need to get this bagel down.<br>He'd haul ass, that's what Jesus would do now.<br>A fighter plane? Dear God, let it be ours.<br>We're scared of bombs and so we're loading guns.<br>Who didn't have a rude word for the towers?<br>The world's hip-deep in junk that mattered once.<br>Hands rise to heaven as asbestos falls.<br>The air is yellow, hideously thick.<br>A photo, private once, on fifty walls.<br>A candle in a teacup on a brick.<br>They found -- can you believe -- a pair of hands.<br>Oh, that don't hurt. Well, maybe just a bit.<br>The Winter Garden's shattered but it stands.<br>A howl is Mene Tekeled in the grit.<br>Some made it in a basement, so there's hope.<br>The following are definitely known . . .<br>You live, is how you learn that you can cope.<br>Yes, I sincerely want to be alone.<br>Don't even ask. That's what your tears are for.<br>The cats are in a shelter; we are not.<br>Pedestrians rule the Roeblings' bridge once more.<br>A memory of home is what we've got.<br>Tribeca with no people, that's plain wrong.<br>It's just a shopping bag, but who can tell?<br>Okay, okay, I'm moving right along.<br>The postcards hit two dollars, and they sell.<br>Be honest, now. You're proud of living here.<br>If this is Armageddon, make it quick.<br>Today, for you, the rose is free, my dear.<br>We're shooting down our neighbors. Now I'm sick.<br>I can't do that for fifty times the fare.<br>A coronary. Other things went on.<br>It goes, like, something mighty, and despair.<br>All those not now accounted for are gone.<br>Here is the man whose god blinked in the flash,<br>Whose god says sinful people should be hurt,<br>The man whose god is kneeling in the ash,<br>The man whose god is dancing on the dirt.<br>Okay, I ate at Windows now and then.<br>This fortune-teller went to Notre Dame?<br>They knocked 'em down. We'll stack 'em up again.<br>Oh, I'd say one or two things stayed the same.<br>Some nights I still can see them, like a ghost.<br>King Kong was right about the Empire State.<br>I'd rather not hear what you'll miss the most.<br>A taller building? Maybe. I can wait.<br>I hugged the stranger sitting next to me.<br>So this is what you call a second chance.<br>One turn aside, into eternity.<br>This is New York. We'll find a place to dance.<br></div></td>
<br /></tr>
<br /></table><br><br><div style="font-size:11px"><center>With resolution wanting, reason runs<br>To characters and symbols, noughts and ones.</center></div><br><br><br><blockquote><blockquote>[speceng at visi.com]<br>
<br />[Permission hereby granted by John M. Ford to make one or two copies for personal use, but please do not reprint except by permission of the author. Thank you.]</blockquote></blockquote><blockquote>Eugenehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01914730227414261189noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3712961.post-853727392002-08-22T17:01:00.000-07:002002-12-02T18:27:36.000-08:00<blockquote><b>The Missing</b>, by Gerard Van der Leun
<br />
<br />
<br />Their silence keeps me sleepless for I know
<br />Within the smoke their ash revolves as snow,
<br />To settle on our skin as fading stars
<br />Dissolve into pure dust at break of day.
<br />
<br />At dawn a distant shudder in the earth
<br />Disclosed the fold of fire into steel,
<br />These rumbles not from subways underground,
<br />But screams from out of towers sheathed in flame.
<br />
<br />We stood upon the heights like men of straw
<br />Transfixed by flames that started in the sky,
<br />And watched them plunging down in death¹s ballet
<br />To land among those dying deep below.
<br />
<br />We breathed the smoke that bent and crept and crawled.
<br />We learned to hate the smoke that lingered so.
<br />We knew that blood could only answer blood,
<br />And so we yearned to go and not to go.
<br />
<br />By evening all their ash had settled so
<br />That on the leaves outside my window glowed
<br />Their souls in small bright stars until the rain
<br />Cleaned us of what could not be clean again.
<br />
<br />That last, lost summer faded into ash.
<br />Their faces faded as the autumn flowed
<br />Through chill and heat into the Persian sea,
<br />Where angered warships prowled in search of stones.
<br />
<br />Within their city, shrines were our resolve.
<br />We placed them where they stood or where they lay.
<br />And now upon our stones their faces loom
<br />And gaze at us from times beyond repeal.
<br />
<br />Their silence keeps me sleepless for I know.
<br />
<br /> [boswell at americandigest.org]</blockquote>Eugenehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01914730227414261189noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3712961.post-853599982002-08-19T11:58:00.000-07:002002-08-19T13:15:46.000-07:00WE'D LIKE TO BEGIN THIS PROJECT by quoting our inspiration -- a shard from the shattering of an earlier world, W.H. Auden's <i>September 1, 1939</i>. The poem was often noted after the September 11 attacks, and has become nearly a cliche, but things often become cliche precisely because they are so apt. So:<blockquote><b>September 1, 1939</b>, by W.H. Auden
<br />
<br />I sit in one of the dives
<br />On Fifty-second Street
<br />Uncertain and afraid
<br />As the clever hopes expire
<br />Of a low dishonest decade:
<br />Waves of anger and fear
<br />Circulate over the bright
<br />And darkened lands of the earth,
<br />Obsessing our private lives;
<br />The unmentionable odour of death
<br />Offends the September night.
<br />
<br />Accurate scholarship can
<br />Unearth the whole offence
<br />From Luther until now
<br />That has driven a culture mad,
<br />Find what occurred at Linz,
<br />What huge imago made
<br />A psychopathic god:
<br />I and the public know
<br />What all schoolchildren learn,
<br />Those to whom evil is done
<br />Do evil in return.
<br />
<br />Exiled Thucydides knew
<br />All that a speech can say
<br />About Democracy,
<br />And what dictators do,
<br />The elderly rubbish they talk
<br />To an apathetic grave;
<br />Analysed all in his book,
<br />The enlightenment driven away,
<br />The habit-forming pain,
<br />Mismanagement and grief:
<br />We must suffer them all again.
<br />
<br />Into this neutral air
<br />Where blind skyscrapers use
<br />Their full height to proclaim
<br />The strength of Collective Man,
<br />Each language pours its vain
<br />Competitive excuse:
<br />But who can live for long
<br />In an euphoric dream;
<br />Out of the mirror they stare,
<br />Imperialism's face
<br />And the international wrong.
<br />
<br />Faces along the bar
<br />Cling to their average day:
<br />The lights must never go out,
<br />The music must always play,
<br />All the conventions conspire
<br />To make this fort assume
<br />The furniture of home;
<br />Lest we should see where we are,
<br />Lost in a haunted wood,
<br />Children afraid of the night
<br />Who have never been happy or good.
<br />
<br />The windiest militant trash
<br />Important Persons shout
<br />Is not so crude as our wish:
<br />What mad Nijinsky wrote
<br />About Diaghilev
<br />Is true of the normal heart;
<br />For the error bred in the bone
<br />Of each woman and each man
<br />Craves what it cannot have,
<br />Not universal love
<br />But to be loved alone.
<br />
<br />From the conservative dark
<br />Into the ethical life
<br />The dense commuters come,
<br />Repeating their morning vow;
<br />"I will be true to the wife,
<br />I'll concentrate more on my work,"
<br />And helpless governors wake
<br />To resume their compulsory game:
<br />Who can release them now,
<br />Who can reach the deaf,
<br />Who can speak for the dumb?
<br />
<br />All I have is a voice
<br />To undo the folded lie,
<br />The romantic lie in the brain
<br />Of the sensual man-in-the-street
<br />And the lie of Authority
<br />Whose buildings grope the sky:
<br />There is no such thing as the State
<br />And no one exists alone;
<br />Hunger allows no choice
<br />To the citizen or the police;
<br />We must love one another or die.
<br />
<br />Defenceless under the night
<br />Our world in stupor lies;
<br />Yet, dotted everywhere,
<br />Ironic points of light
<br />Flash out wherever the Just
<br />Exchange their messages:
<br />May I, composed like them
<br />Of Eros and of dust,
<br />Beleaguered by the same
<br />Negation and despair,
<br />Show an affirming flame.
<br /></blockquote>Eugenehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01914730227414261189noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3712961.post-853599532002-08-19T04:03:00.000-07:002002-08-19T13:53:10.000-07:00SUBMISSION GUIDELINES: Please send submissions to volokh at law.ucla.edu . A few tips:<ol><li>Poetry is a tremendously subjective field; the material here is chosen solely based on our subjective and often erroneous judgment.</li>
<br />
<br /><li>Because of our quirky tastes, please submit <b>only formal verse</b>, which generally means at least metered, and preferably both metered and rhymed. Free verse can be wonderful -- but it's just not our cup of tea.</li>
<br />
<br /><li>We prefer poems that are <b>20 lines or shorter</b>. We may make exceptions, but shorter is better (even in the under-20-line zone).</li>
<br />
<br /><li>We generally like poems that are <b>subtle but not opaque</b>, that are <b>neither over-the-top nor passionless</b>, and that use language that is <b>elegant but simple</b>. How's that for precise guidelines?</li>
<br />
<br /><li>By submitting the poem, you are <b>agreeing to let us distribute it indefinitely</b> on this Web site, and also on the <a href="http://volokh.blogspot.com">Volokh Conspiracy site</a>. You are also agreeing to let us <b>include your name and e-mail address</b>, unless you <i>expressly tell us otherwise</i>.</li>
<br />
<br /><li>We are happy to republish work you've already published elsewhere. Please do not, however, send us work that you love but that was written by others; please ask them, if you know them, to submit it themselves.</li>
<br />
<br /><li>We will try to respond within one week of your submission, and we will usually succeed.</li>
<br />
<br /><li>If we find that we lack the taste or the heart to uncover enough gems in what we're sent -- or, for that matter, if we're not sent anything at all -- we reserve the <b>right to quit having published nothing</b>.</li></ol>Finally, something that is surely not news to most writers and readers: A poem is not (or at least not necessarily) a political slogan. It need not be a forthright declarative or imperative sentence. Its meaning ought not be cloaked in too much indirection, but neither does it require the straightforwardness of reportage or instruction. A phrase may reflect ambivalence as well as certainty. The narrator is not always to be trusted. Words of triumph can cloak despair, and vice versa.
<br />Eugenehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01914730227414261189noreply@blogger.com