I wrote this poem and the note below it on 1 March 2003, in response to the Iraq War. Sometimes those of us opposed to that war were accused of having forgotten the dead of 9/11. Just like now when those of us opposed to the bombing of Gaza are accused of indifference to the dead of October 7th.
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Mirror
Looking at the cherry blossom
Just opening on the black branches:
Fragile stars in the February wind.
It seems so easy, when the flame
Blossoms from the end of a gun
To destroy the enemy.
Under the pale blue winter sky,
Drifts of snowdrops bring unheeded
Their message of peace.
Distant faces we will never see
Twisted in pain, because we cried
For vengeance.
Life calls to life in the turning
Of the year, as naturally
As breathing.
Charred corpses in the dust
Cannot rise up and speak.
Their mouths are stopped.
Birds sing of reconciliation
But their truth is silenced
By the call to arms.
Bombs are impersonal, smart:
You can’t hear the dying
From so far above.
The frogs are mating in the pond
So many spawn, life to excess:
Some will die.
I have not forgotten the dead
All the dead sing in my blood
The innumerable dead.
But Nature wastes nothing,
Life feeds on life. Only the savagery
Of war is unnatural.
Easier to call for revenge,
Than to look in a mirror and see
The enemy staring back at you.
Yvonne Aburrow, 6.27 p.m., Saturday, 01 March 2003
This poem was partly inspired by Ketaki Kushari Dyson’s The June Magnificat, and partly by seeing beautiful spring flowers, and wondering how it is possible to reconcile these images of beauty with the horror and tragedy of war.
It is not possible: they can only sit side-by-side, reminding us of the fragile beauty of life, and that it is that fragile beauty which is crushed, ignored, and destroyed in war.
Making war for the sake of vengeance is like vendetta on a massive scale: we can see the insanity of vendetta – why is it not obvious that war is a similar insanity and, if we ever awake from it, we will find innocent blood on our hands?
We have not forgotten the dead of 9/11. But nor have we forgotten the dead of all the wars, famines, and epidemics, and we will go on saying, “No. Not in my name.”
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Dowsing for Divinity 