the tender touch of war

i.

i was mad, mad, mad
seeing the damaged body of a naked child
his feet eaten as if by a hungry mine

by a war machine greedy for whatever's at hand
the flesh of persons or the mechanics of things
satisfying its thirst for the blood of prey

the image i beheld disturbed me
the shattered feet, the clotted blood
the grimacing face of the chocolate child

watching a medic's cradling arms
bearing the wounded like a technician defusing a bomb
i witnessed the tender touch of war first-hand

an awakening compassion surrounded me
soothing the anger boiling in my heart
feeling empathy for innocents, victims in the hostile land


ii.

new eyes turned my sights to another war
the one not far but in my bodily home
the one of madness feeding all other wars

iii.

when dead images hold their grip
about the feelings succoring us
our envisioned end is not our end

for somewhere in the encumbering fog
in the night-time parliament of fears
a fire blazes, shining through the night

and the vision rising before our sight
is our creed, bearing public witness
our joy placed in bas-relief



*...many poems and novels have been written in this [20th] century by exiles who describe a region of the world from where they have come as more beautiful than it had been in reality, simply because now it is lost forever.
-Czeslaw Milsoz


*The past of every individual undergoes constant transformations in his or her memory, and more often than not it acquires the features of an irretrievable land made more and more strange by the flow of time.
-Czeslaw Milsoz