93. 14 October 2023, Saturday in Ordinary Time
Lawrence
Hall, HSG
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
Flashback (not for
publication)
Domestic
carnage now filled all the year
With
Feast-days; the old Man from the chimney nook,
The
Maiden from the bosom of her Love,
The
Mother from the Cradle of her Babe,
The
Warrior from the Field – all perish’d, all
Wordsworth, The Prelude, 1805-1806, Book X,
356-360
We busy ourselves in our accustomed ways:
Dishes to wash, the still-green lawn to be mowed
The vacuum cleaner to annoy the household pup
A book, a chair, a reverie, a glass of tea
But then
The evening news is the call of our conscience
The evening news is a long-ago call-back
With offerings in two senses only
Tastefully muted sounds and filtered visuals
Not
The concussions, the stench, the stickiness
of blood, the dust on our lips, the screams we deny, the tears we swallow the
impossible pulse that makes breathing gasping hyperventilating fragments
stinging the skin concussions concussions concussions make them stop make it
all stop running running running over there drag him to the ditch hurry hurry
hurry you can treat him there he’s dead his eyes are open to the gravel go back
again hurry hurry hurry breathe breathe breathe
Why is this happening again why is this happening again
Stop
That child is dead
Stop it
What’s that? A dead soldier. He is so small
Stop it
So many bodies, shrunken into their clothes
A still-clawed arm sticking out from a bundle
Dead bodies fuzzed out on the evening news
Non-combatant commandos channeling their views
And darling little undergrads shrieking, “Death to the Jews”
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