Lebanon 1982
Echo-chamber of mind reverberates
with death toll
no hope no hope
Digital readout illuminates White
House basement
crisis center
Bathrobe President watches seconds
pass
Camera steady, moves in
"A look of distinguished concern"
Print
All the liberals die in the ceasefire
Binoculars scan the city horizon
One hundred artillery pieces move
into position
Tanks squat nearby like toads
The bombardment begins
Smoke rises high as empire state
Flames rush into the apartment complex
The fire was burning the stone
The Red Cross hospital disintegrates
Somewhere a man lifts
a glass of water Blood leaps from buckets in
fright
The asylum patient runs screaming
down the corridor of
insanity: Hitler! Hitler
has
risen from the dead!
The walls of the nation collapse
Cockroach armies move among the
rubble
Anti-personnel weapons are found
on Capitol Hill
This is the logic of an expansionist
state power
This is the advantage of high velocity
fragmentation bombs
This is the triumph of a well organized
lobby in Washington, D.C.
World doubles over in pain
Homeless nation strains to hold
its vital organs inside
U.S. envoy dies of exhaustion upon
the anaesthetized table of negotiation
Bloodied axe of history sings in
a guttural voice
its hideous german song
Carnage laid foot deep over body
of earth
no hope
As
the Latin American War Approaches
To listen for the sound of water
on distant shores
And hear only of men dying there!
It is a seashell, and I stoop low
The small ears of the Caribbean
dead call out our name
Ears that fall into our laps as
we open the morning paper
Small ears worn by the powerful
when they gather in the dying light
The General who offers
his first-born son
The river has a quiet, deep bed
The Financier who fixes his price
on the world market
The blown out oil wells, and children's
hearts
And the Secretary of State
who saw good reason
in the mad junta's eye spaces
The rush-hour train groans and overturns
on the great curvature of the world
The population centers grow thin
and ragged
like the children of the poor
The fighting tosses and turns by
fits, gets up
and marches into the ocean
The dead wash up at our feet
Poem
for Immediate Disarmament
One moment ago
the almost split-second
Trees were trees
upstanding
in nature's design
The war of the bleeding branches!
Off
with their buds! The battle
of the harvest moons!
One moment ago
Seas tasted
of their briny depths
The war of the capsized vessels!
Driftwood
to the pyre! The seize
of the roasted marshmallows!
One moment ago
The word was voice
speech of it sound
The war of the silencers! Handguns
for the inmates! The battle
of the rattling teacups! The
overthrow
of the musical chairs!
One moment ago
the almost split-second
the almost spl -
seco the
almost sp -se
the am lost
-
One moment ago
CONTENTS
The
Day After page 1
Poem
Against the Reagan Administration page 2
At
a Rally in Washington Against the Draft page 2
America
Revisited page 3
Poems
for a Small Place to Rest page
4 page 5 page
6
What
He Would Not Tell Him page 7
Waking
Poem page 7
Moon
page 7
Laborers
page 7
Spring
1980 page 7
Lebanon
1982 page 8
As
the Latin American War Approaches page 8
Poem
for Immediate Disarmament page 8
To
Whom It May Concern page 9
Song
of the Little Girl page 10