 My imagination makes me human and makes me a fool; it gives me all the world and exiles me from it.--Ursula K. Le Guin |
 Union AvenueAn Urban Journal Exploring Place, Purpose, Literature, Memory, and This Time |
War Poetry
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Last-Minute Message For a Time Capsule I have to tell you this, whoever you are: that on one summer morning here, the ocean pounded in on tumbledown breakers, a south wind, bustling along the shore, whipped the froth into little rainbows, and a reckless gull swept down the beach as if to fly were everything it needed. I thought of your hovering saucers, looking for clues, and I wanted to write this down, so it wouldn't be lost forever - that once upon a time we had meadows here, and astonishing things, swans and frogs and luna moths and blue skies that could stagger your heart. We could have had them still, and welcomed you to earth, but we also had the righteous ones who worshipped the True Faith, and Holy War. When you go home to your shining galaxy, say that what you learned from this dead and barren place is to beware the righteous ones. --Philip Appleman from New and Selected Poems, 1956-1996 University of Arkansas Press |
For Sharbat Gula
Names have power, so let us speak of hers. Her name is Sharbat Gula, and she is Pashtun, that most warlike of Afghan tribes. Her eyes—-then and now—-burn with ferocity. --Cathy Newman, National Geographic, 2002 Your staring, sea-green eyes stopped our breath Made us realize how little we know of suffering How often it is borne by the nameless, the young Whose past is a bombed out city, a burnt field. We stare back but cannot see the sea nor light nor summer's sweetwater flower you are named for. There no reprieve, no end of winter or endless sky of falling bombs turned once again to stars, Migrating cranes or kestrels silently winging, no green Of yew and oak and olive, no honeysuckle, no rose In those dark, cold depths, not even a child, No laughter, no tears, no singing. --Judy Loest | |||