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TO A TERRORIST
For the historical ache, the ache passed down
which finds its circumstance and becomes
the present ache, I offer this poem
without hope, knowing there's nothing,
not even revenge, which alleviates
a life like yours. I offer it as one
might offer his father's ashes
to the wind, a gesture
when there's nothing else to do.
Still, I must say to you:
I hate your good reasons.
I hate the hatefulness that makes you fall
in love with death, your own included.
Perhaps you're hating me now,
I who own my own house
and live in a country so muscular,
so smug, it thinks its terror is meant
only to mean well, and to protect.
Christ turned his singular cheek,
one man's holiness another's absurdity.
Like you, the rest of us obey the sting,
the surge. I'm just speaking out loud
to cancel my silence. Consider it an old impulse,
doomed to become mere words.
The first poet probably spoke to thunder
and, for a while, believed
thunder had an ear and a choice.
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FROM A TERRORIST
Impudent American serpent, how dare you assume you understand! How
dare you put me and our whole religion here on a psychiatrist's couch,
den of viperish scum! These childish observations are literally worthless,
corrupted by your immoral, infidel mind -- you cannot know, CANNOT know.
No, ask instead about the ceaseless heresies of the world's self-styled
mightiest nation. Ask instead about the desecration of these brave people's
holiest of divine holies -- what with the inhuman oppression, the endless
interference, the harsh meddling, the downright cruel butchery... and all
for a thing as crude as oil. Ask instead what overwhelming, monumental
atrocity it took *to unhinge a whole community's sense of right and wrong*:
THIS is the crime. The genie is out of the bottle.
Though at least you confess the guilt of the wretched US. I like
this, so I choose to spare you. Keep away from Chicago on the
seventeenth of June.
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