Monday, July 7, 2014

for madmen


 
 
 
How enormous are we! How far our reach!  How endless our creativity! (Sometimes it comes as a surprise that the great are still only human.)
In war, the notion of humans being anymore than their puny physical selves is completely abandoned. So in war,we debase ourselves. And for the power trips of madmen,(western and eastern), we do it over and over.
 
 
 
Goya.           

Of course not;
of course no one that ever cracked open a head
has seen a symphony pour out.
 

No executioner has seen the flow of an amber fireside
with its intimate and tangling caresses
drain from the split skulls of lovers
 

nor have soldiers who shoot dark holes
seen rafts of memories spilling, carrying the children,
                  the birthdays, the orchards, the dances.
 

When they shot the poet Lorca,
the bullets sailed in a universe, yet when the blood spurted
it was only blood to them.

3 comments:

Sabne Raznik said...

Wow, this poem and the one before it are incredible!

I launched a new blog yesterday: http://sabneraznik.blogspot.com/

Thought you might be interested.

Sonu Kunchal said...

It is a beautiful poem ... evocative and disturbing at the same time.
I am sorry to sound ignorant, but I did not understand the reference to "Goya." Is it simply an form of address, or does it have a deeper connotation?

Michael said...

Thank you for the comment. The poem came after spending time looking through Goya's 'The Disasters of War' series of prints. The workmanlike approach of soldiers being savage struck me. It's not in the poem, but I wanted to keep the connection with Goya.M