»
Archives
»
Corner Pub #2
»
Samira
| Corner Pub #2 |
|
Samira |
|
|
allan Senior Member
since 2000-04-09
Posts 620On the road 
|
Her name is Samira She is five She sees the silver bird flying through a clear blue sky It glints in the sun and catches her eye Fifteen seconds pass slow in the sun... The sight brings happy memories to her mind Little tinsel squares thrown at a joyous wedding The tiny silver horse she had loved so much in the bazaar A sparkle of water in the market square Ten seconds pass, a leaf falls gently... She smiles and squints in the sun and closes one beautiful brown eye The better to see her silver bird fly The bird makes a long slow arc She loves the shape of the curve it makes Like the curve of her arm shielding her eyes Her thoughts go to her very own tree And the soft shapes of its lovely limbs And she thinks of the sound Of the leaves at night How they take her off to sleep Five seconds of love and light remain... The sun has warmed her to sleepy dreaming Creeping under the shade of her protecting arm And in playful loving and new thoughts waking She touches her cheek And runs to tell......... §§§- On the side of the "bird" in large letters: "From Uncle Sam" and a grin The missile cost so many dollars So many gifts that could have been... Perhaps for ten thousand children And two worlds so much nearer But death from the sky could never bring A tiny horse to our Samira Having lost its track and trajectory The maps of its mind don't work And who will ever know why It saw the house as a target Was it lost and dreaming too? And through a fever of confusion A little village house Seemed a better place to die Than its sad mechanical mind Too cold and lonely in the sky Ten days go by in a fiery heat before a GI passes by Thinking of his lovely daughter The apple of his eye The bloody bones he tidies up And throws them in the sewer "Some damned unlucky Iraqi cat or dog" Our world is now one fewer |
||
| © Copyright 2003 Allan Tierney - All Rights Reserved | |||
|
JamesMichael Member Empyrean
since 1999-11-16
Posts 33336Kapolei, Hawaii, USA |
I can see your concern. There is a simple solution. If Saddam would step down and if his replacement was willing to give up the illegal weapons that Saddam has in his possession she would not find herself in the position of an innocent placed in danger by an unwilling Leader...James |
||
Joyce Johnson
since 2001-03-10
Posts 9912Washington State |
Yes this was sad very sad and no one is happy about it. I wrote something on this earlier about a child that just happened to be in the way. You wrote a very nice poem about it and these things should be remembered when decisions are made. Joyce |
||
|
Yu Lan Senior Member
since 2000-04-13
Posts 1462New Zealand |
This is wonderfully written Allan.. I love the last line of the first piece: "And runs to tell........." It just says it all. -Lynne Bless your cotten sockies, you poetic maniacs. ^_^ |
||
|
allan Senior Member
since 2000-04-09
Posts 620On the road |
Thank you very much Yu Lan. There must come an end to hate and action without compassion. If not then we will ALL be ashamed and rightly so. In this day and age do we still have to kill to prove a point? This coming slaughter will be for economic and political reasons and nothing more. Oh yes, a few self-righteous politicians make themselves feel so powerful and holy to initiate the death of innocents. How utterly ugly that in this day and age we are governed by such demogogues. These no-necked militarists and hawks are so screwed up in their racist born-again dogma and arrant xenophobia that they are capable of mass murder while singing halleluyah. WE WILL NOT FORGET. [This message has been edited by allan (03-03-2003 01:09 PM).] |
||
|
allan Senior Member
since 2000-04-09
Posts 620On the road |
The following is the text of John Brady Kiesling's letter of resignation to Secretary of State Colin L. Powell. Mr. Kiesling is a career diplomat who has served in United States embassies from Tel Aviv to Casablanca to Yerevan. Dear Mr. Secretary: I am writing you to submit my resignation from the Foreign Service of the United States and from my position as Political Counselor in U.S. Embassy Athens, effective March 7. I do so with a heavy heart. The baggage of my upbringing included a felt obligation to give something back to my country. Service as a U.S. diplomat was a dream job. I was paid to understand foreign languages and cultures, to seek out diplomats, politicians, scholars and journalists, and to persuade them that U.S. interests and theirs fundamentally coincided. My faith in my country and its values was the most powerful weapon in my diplomatic arsenal. It is inevitable that during twenty years with the State Department I would become more sophisticated and cynical about the narrow and selfish bureaucratic motives that sometimes shaped our policies. Human nature is what it is, and I was rewarded and promoted for understanding human nature. But until this Administration it had been possible to believe that by upholding the policies of my president I was also upholding the interests of the American people and the world. I believe it no longer. The policies we are now asked to advance are incompatible not only with American values but also with American interests. Our fervent pursuit of war with Iraq is driving us to squander the international legitimacy that has been America’s most potent weapon of both offense and defense since the days of Woodrow Wilson. We have begun to dismantle the largest and most effective web of international relationships the world has ever known. Our current course will bring instability and danger, not security. The sacrifice of global interests to domestic politics and to bureaucratic self-interest is nothing new, and it is certainly not a uniquely American problem. Still, we have not seen such systematic distortion of intelligence, such systematic manipulation of American opinion, since the war in Vietnam. The September 11 tragedy left us stronger than before, rallying around us a vast international coalition to cooperate for the first time in a systematic way against the threat of terrorism. But rather than take credit for those successes and build on them, this Administration has chosen to make terrorism a domestic political tool, enlisting a scattered and largely defeated Al Qaeda as its bureaucratic ally. We spread disproportionate terror and confusion in the public mind, arbitrarily linking the unrelated problems of terrorism and Iraq. The result, and perhaps the motive, is to justify a vast misallocation of shrinking public wealth to the military and to weaken the safeguards that protect American citizens from the heavy hand of government. September 11 did not do as much damage to the fabric of American society as we seem determined to so to ourselves. Is the Russia of the late Romanovs really our model, a selfish, superstitious empire thrashing toward self-destruction in the name of a doomed status quo? We should ask ourselves why we have failed to persuade more of the world that a war with Iraq is necessary. We have over the past two years done too much to assert to our world partners that narrow and mercenary U.S. interests override the cherished values of our partners. Even where our aims were not in question, our consistency is at issue. The model of Afghanistan is little comfort to allies wondering on what basis we plan to rebuild the Middle East, and in whose image and interests. Have we indeed become blind, as Russia is blind in Chechnya, as Israel is blind in the Occupied Territories, to our own advice, that overwhelming military power is not the answer to terrorism? After the shambles of post-war Iraq joins the shambles in Grozny and Ramallah, it will be a brave foreigner who forms ranks with Micronesia to follow where we lead. We have a coalition still, a good one. The loyalty of many of our friends is impressive, a tribute to American moral capital built up over a century. But our closest allies are persuaded less that war is justified than that it would be perilous to allow the U.S. to drift into complete solipsism. Loyalty should be reciprocal. Why does our President condone the swaggering and contemptuous approach to our friends and allies this Administration is fostering, including among its most senior officials. Has “oderint dum metuant” really become our motto? I urge you to listen to America’s friends around the world. Even here in Greece, purported hotbed of European anti-Americanism, we have more and closer friends than the American newspaper reader can possibly imagine. Even when they complain about American arrogance, Greeks know that the world is a difficult and dangerous place, and they want a strong international system, with the U.S. and EU in close partnership. When our friends are afraid of us rather than for us, it is time to worry. And now they are afraid. Who will tell them convincingly that the United States is as it was, a beacon of liberty, security, and justice for the planet? Mr. Secretary, I have enormous respect for your character and ability. You have preserved more international credibility for us than our policy deserves, and salvaged something positive from the excesses of an ideological and self-serving Administration. But your loyalty to the President goes too far. We are straining beyond its limits an international system we built with such toil and treasure, a web of laws, treaties, organizations, and shared values that sets limits on our foes far more effectively than it ever constrained America’s ability to defend its interests. I am resigning because I have tried and failed to reconcile my conscience with my ability to represent the current U.S. Administration. I have confidence that our democratic process is ultimately self-correcting, and hope that in a small way I can contribute from outside to shaping policies that better serve the security and prosperity of the American people and the world we share. |
||
|
|
⇧ top of page ⇧ |
|
| All times are ET (US). All dates are in Year-Month-Day format. | ||
