December '04 Editor's Choice: W.D. Ehrhart
Vietnam
Vet offers "The Bombing
of Afghanistan"
THE BOMBING OF AFGHANISTAN
for Anne
You must be sitting down to eat,
the evening air this time of day
just turning luminescent blue
and autumn crisp. I might wonder
what you've made for dinner,
how much homework Leela has,
the thousand mundane daily things
our lives are made of, and I do.
But mostly I am noticing
this moment how the stars above
the Gower shine more brightly here
than back at home: Orion's belt,
the Pleiades, the Little Dipper
pouring water into Swansea Bay.
Here it's midnight on a rare and
cloudless night in Wales, the kind
of night that poems are made of.
But though the darkness and a line
of trees hide the ruins of the Norman
castle overlooking Mumbles,
the jagged remnants of its massive
walls, the broken arches, ghostly
silence where the ring of laughter
and the might of lords once must have
seemed forever serve as stark
reminders of the transience
of what we think we wish for.
I used to wish to be a poet,
celebrated, emulated,
maybe win the Pulitzer Prize.
I've plied my trade for years, and all
it's gotten me is endless trips
too far from home, endless nights
like this, alone in strange hotels
and homes that aren't my own. Somewhere
in the darkness bombs are falling,
lives are ending in the time
it takes to write these words, and how
much time we've got together
who can know? I only know
those graceful palm trees by the hotel
pool last month in California,
the little chapel in Ohio
built in eighteen fifty-four,
that quiet Massachusetts dawn
jogging next to Walden Pond,
these stars above me, all the world
I'd give to be back home with you.
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