Pretend I can carve light
out of darkness.
Won’t attempt to translate
shrapnel infiltrating a child’s body
bulldozed everything --
Methodical
taking of human identity
the way you suck dust with a vacuum.
I won’t make a list of places.
I won’t write another poem about war.
I will take a hammer
to break down walls.
I will look for the flowers, 24 years later,
surviving women of Beirut held in their hands ---
as they walked away from their charcoaled city
their husbands’ ghosts following.
July 28, 2006
© Kathy Engel
